About the role
Position: Sr. Staff Engineer, Platform Firmware Location: San Jose, CA Job Id: 616 # of Openings: 0 Sr. Staff Engineer, Platform Firmware Engineer Location: San Jose, CA (On-site) Ayar Labs is shattering AI data bottlenecks by moving data at the speed of light. As pioneers of co-packaged optics (CPO), we are using light instead of electricity to move data faster, further, and with a fraction of the energy needed to fuel the explosive growth of AI models. Backed by industry giants like NVIDIA, AMD and Intel and manufactured in partnership with the world’s leading semiconductor ecosystem, Ayar Labs’ co-packaged optics solution is key to unleashing next-generation AI scale-up architectures. We are seeking a Sr. Staff Platform Firmware Engineer to own the board-level and platform-emulation firmware used to enable, validate, and demonstrate Ayar Labs’ electro-photonic products. This role focuses on firmware running on STM32-based boards that emulate customer platforms, control external hardware, and validate embedded firmware running inside Ayar Labs’ and customers’ SoCs. This is a highly system-oriented, hands-on role operating at the intersection of hardware, firmware, and customer platforms, with deep influence on board design, validation strategy, and customer enablement. What You’ll Do • Own and evolve platform-level firmware running on STM32-based systems used for demos, validation, and customer enablement. • Develop firmware that controls and monitors ADCs, DACs, regulators, laser modules, and other board-level components. • Build and maintain firmware that emulates customer platforms, enabling realistic system behavior without requiring full customer SoCs. • Support and scale firmware across multiple board designs, balancing reuse, configurability, and maintainability. • Lead board bring-up and sign-off, working hands-on in the lab to validate functionality and readiness. • Review schematics and PCB designs, providing actionable feedback to the hardware team when changes materially improve firmware robustness, testability, or system reliability. • Coordinate closely with the embedded firmware team responsible for photonic IC control, ensuring clean interfaces and effective system validation. • Develop board-level firmware that controls, exercises, and tests embedded firmware running inside Ayar Labs’ and customers’ SoCs • Partner with systems, validation, and customer-facing teams to debug complex cross-domain issues. Required
