Embedded Audio Firmware Engineer

Responsibilities:

• Design, implement, and maintain embedded firmware for DSP cores.
• Develop firmware using a mix of C/C++ (and selective assembly where appropriate), with strong focus on fixed point performance, memory, and power optimization.
• Design, simulate, characterize and optimize algorithms to prove that they meet intended goals, and map to the constraints of custom hardware or DSP cores.
• Develop test strategies: unit tests, test harnesses and lab setups to prove the capabilities and limitations of experimental algorithms, and provide manufacturing/production diagnostics.
• Collaborate with our chip design, applications, systems and marketing teams to define requirements and interfaces.
• Contribute to driving new ideas, creating IP, methodologies and techniques to improve existing software solutions.
• Contribute to documentation and planning: design and requirement specs, interface specs, work packages, and bring-up guides.
• Participate in code reviews and help establish best practices for embedded quality, and maintainability.
• Use debugging/profiling tools: JTAG/SWD, logic analyzers, oscilloscopes, trace and cycle-accurate profiling when available.
• Bring up new hardware: boot flows, clocks, memory maps, interrupt vectors, peripheral init, and early validation.

Required Skills and Qualifications:

• Degree (1st or 2.1) or equivalent, in Electronics, Embedded Software, Signal Processing or related discipline
• Strong professional experience of developing embedded firmware in C/C++ for fixed-point and floating-point DSPs and embedded platforms.
• Ability to go from a Matlab algorithm design to an embedded firmware design in C/C++ for fixed-point and floating-point
• DSPs and embedded platforms.
• Proven ability to optimize firmware: cycle counting, memory layout, DMA usage, cache behavior, minimizing latency and jitter.
• Experience in several of the following: filter design, adaptive filtering, audio / sensor signal processing;  FFT/spectral based processing and machine learning in an audio context. 
• Solid understanding of embedded software fundamentals: 
• register-level programming, memory-mapped I/O
• concurrency (ISRs, RTOS tasks), race conditions, timing determinism
• fixed-point arithmetic, numerical precision, and overflow/underflow management
• Proven ability to optimize firmware: cycle counting, memory layout, DMA usage, cache behavior, minimizing latency and jitter.
• Ability to pick up a broad range of responsibilities from design and simulation to prototyping and implementation on custom hardware.
• Ability to plan and work to a managed schedule across multiple functional teams.
• Comfortable with toolchains and build systems:
• GCC/LLVM-based toolchains, cross-compilation
• CMake/Make, Meson, linker scripts, map files
• Strong debugging skills with hardware and firmware:
• JTAG/SWD debugging
• root-cause analysis of timing and performance issues
• Source control expertise (Git, GitHub) and disciplined engineering practices (code reviews, CI).

Preferred Skills and Qualifications:

• Languages: 
• Firmware and algorithm design/development: C, C++, Matlab, assembly (optional).
• Test tooling/scripting: Python, TCL (optional), PowerShell (optional), Groovy (optional)
• Architectures: 
• DSP cores - Synopsys DSP cores, Tensilica Hifi DSP cores 
• Tools: 
• JTAG/SWD debuggers, GDB, OpenOCD/J-Link, logic analyzer, oscilloscope, trace tools
• Practices: 
• profiling, unit/integration testing, Jenkins CI/CD, Git and GitHub workflows 
• Experience with common DSP libraries/techniques (e.g., CMSIS-DSP, vendor DSP libs) and SIMD/vector optimization patterns.
• Experience of Machine Learning frameworks such as PyTorch or Tensorflow: how to train and tune a Machine Learning model, how to debug and test Machine Learning models.
• Experience of implementing a Machine Learning model on a fixed-point embedded platform/DSP core.