Principal Member of Technical Staff Firmware Engineer

ADVANCE YOUR CAREER. ADVANCE THE WORLD. 

At AMD, we believe technology has the power to solve the world’s most important challenges. From advancing healthcare and scientific discovery to powering AI and the technologies people rely on every day, innovation at AMD is shaping the future. 

Whether you’re designing next-gen processors, enabling AI breakthroughs, or bringing leading edge products to market, every role at AMD contributes to something bigger — technology that moves the world forward. Join us and, together, we’ll advance your career.

THE ROLE:

AMD is seeking a Principal Member of Technical Staff (PMTS) to lead development across AMD's CPU, GPU and AI platforms, from firmware to host software, in a fast-paced team that works like a startup inside AMD. You will build firmware and systems software that are central to AMD's products, from pre-silicon development to systems in production. There are no component boundaries: you will design, write and debug code wherever the problem is (embedded firmware, Linux kernel drivers, host libraries and tools, telemetry, pre-silicon platforms, and silicon and system bring-up) and take features from first simulation to production deployments, across product generations. In this hands-on, individual-contributor leadership role, you will set technical direction and grow the engineers around you.

THE PERSON:

You are a hands-on technical leader who is as comfortable reading a hardware specification or a firmware trace as reviewing a kernel patch or a host-software API. You bring deep expertise in at least one layer of the stack, have shipped production code in at least one other, and know the rest well enough to make sound design calls across all of them. You thrive in a fast-paced, startup-style environment: you bring clarity to ambiguity, make pragmatic decisions with incomplete information, and ship, measure and iterate. You raise the bar through your code, design reviews and mentoring, and communicate clearly with architecture, silicon, platform and customer teams across sites and time zones.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Own the end-to-end design of major capabilities that cut across the stack, such as boot and initialization, error recovery or telemetry from the hardware up, spanning RTOS firmware, Linux drivers, and host libraries and tools. With the team's other technical leaders, shape the overall architecture and keep the interfaces between layers simple, versioned and testable.
• Write and review production code in whichever layer the program needs most, and personally drive the hardest debugging across hardware, firmware and software.
• Lead bring-up across platforms: full-system simulation and emulation before silicon, first silicon, and production systems with partner and customer teams.
• Influence silicon and system architecture with firmware, software, telemetry and debuggability requirements for next-generation products.
• Build the engineering systems that let the team move fast: CI, automated regression on simulators and hardware, debug and trace tooling, and AI-assisted development and triage.
• Act as a technical escalation point for customer and field issues; drive root-cause analysis and turn the findings into lasting fixes.
• Identify technical risks early and give program leadership clear status, trade-offs and mitigation plans.
• Mentor senior and junior engineers, and set the team's coding, review and testing standards.

PREFERRED EXPERIENCE:

• 15+ years of systems software development, with multiple products shipped to production.
• Demonstrated hands-on technical leadership as a lead engineer, architect or senior individual contributor (Staff/Principal or equivalent), across teams and components.
• Deep expertise in at least one of these areas, production experience in at least one other, and enough working knowledge of the rest to make sound design and interface decisions across the stack:
• embedded firmware on an RTOS (Zephyr, FreeRTOS, ThreadX or similar);
• Linux kernel and device drivers (PCIe, DMA);
• host software: user-space libraries, command-line tools, telemetry and management interfaces;
• platform bring-up: firmware and driver bring-up on full-system simulators, virtual platforms or emulators, and on new silicon and systems.
• A track record of working across component boundaries, for example, owning a feature from firmware through driver to tools, or leading new silicon or system bring-up end to end.
• Experience in a startup or a small, fast-paced team where you owned work across hardware and software boundaries is a strong plus.
• Expert C; Python for tooling and automation; C++, Go or Rust is a plus.
• Hardware/software interface: PCIe, DMA, interrupts and memory-mapped registers.
• SoC firmware domains: boot and initialization, power management, security, RAS and telemetry; experience with CPU, GPU or accelerator firmware is a strong plus.
• Debugging across hardware, firmware and software with JTAG/trace, Linux kernel tools (ftrace, perf, crash dumps) and logs. Pre-silicon development on simulators, virtual platforms or emulators is a strong plus.
• Excellent written and verbal communication; experience with customer escalations and production deployments.

ACADEMIC CREDENTIALS:

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Electronics Engineering or equivalent.

Benefits offered are described:  AMD benefits at a glance.

AMD does not accept unsolicited resumes from headhunters, recruitment agencies, or fee-based recruitment services. AMD and its subsidiaries are equal opportunity, inclusive employers and will consider all applicants without regard to age, ancestry, color, marital status, medical condition, mental or physical disability, national origin, race, religion, political and/or third-party affiliation, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.   We encourage applications from all qualified candidates and will accommodate applicants’ needs under the respective laws throughout all stages of the recruitment and selection process.

AMD may use Artificial Intelligence to help screen, assess or select applicants for this position.  AMD’s “Responsible AI Policy” is available here.

This posting is for an existing vacancy.