Senior Firmware Engineer (FE) - Milpitas, California

MissionHires; Milpitas (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

Annual merit increases

Year-end bonus

RSUs for eligible employees

Invention and patent awards

401(k) employer matching

Length-of-service awards

Comprehensive health insurance plans

Job summary

MissionHires is seeking a Senior Firmware Engineer to design, maintain, and validate NVMe SSD firmware protocol stacks and management interfaces. You will work on NVMe, PCIe Gen5, SMBus, and I3C functionality, diagnosing issues and partnering with validation teams to ensure interoperable storage-controller firmware.

Responsibilities include maintaining the NVMe protocol stack, ensuring compliance with NVMe specs and PCIe Gen5, implementing SMBus/I3C protocols, and analyzing protocol traffic with

Qualifications

• Master’s degree in a related field.
• 3+ years of software or firmware experience.
• 3+ years of SSD controller/firmware architecture experience.
• Strong C/C++ and data-structure skills.
• Hands-on experience with JTAG/ICE debuggers.
• Experience using Git or similar version-control systems.
• Ability to work independently in a small team.
• Strong communication and technical documentation skills.

Responsibilities

• Design and maintain NVMe/SSD firmware protocol stacks and management interfaces.
• Diagnose protocol issues and partner with validation teams for interoperability.
• Implement and validate SMBus and I3C communication protocols.
• Capture and analyze PCIe/NVMe transactions and firmware logs.
• Collaborate on compliance, stress, hot-plug, and power-management tests.
• Provide root-cause analysis and fixes for protocol issues.

Skills

C/C++ programming

Data structures

JTAG/ICE debugging

Git/version control

Independent work

Technical documentation

Communication

Education

Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering/Computer Engineering/Computer Science

Job description

We are seeking a Senior Firmware Engineer to design, maintain, and validate NVMe SSD firmware protocol stacks and management interfaces. You will develop NVMe, PCIe Gen5, SMBus, and I3C functionality; diagnose protocol issues; and partner with validation teams to deliver reliable, interoperable storage-controller firmware.

Responsibilities:

• Design and maintain the NVMe protocol stack, including Admin and I/O command processing and Submission/Completion Queue management.
• Ensure firmware compliance with current NVMe specifications and PCIe Gen5 protocol requirements.
• Design and implement SMBus and I3C communication protocols for reliable host-controller data exchange.
• Implement NVMe command parsing, data-transfer mechanisms, completion flows, and multi-namespace support.
• Implement SMBus/I3C read and write commands, status monitoring, temperature and voltage reporting, and control-command handling.
• Develop status-code reporting, Asynchronous Event Notification (AEN), error recovery, timeout, abort, and reset flows.
• Design SMBus/I3C error-detection and retry mechanisms to protect system stability.
• Validate interoperability with NVMe compliance tools, host platforms, and JEDEC/MIPI SMBus and I3C requirements.
• Capture and analyze PCIe/NVMe transactions using protocol analyzers, logic analyzers, and firmware logs.
• Monitor SMBus/I3C transfer timing and error conditions and improve firmware reliability.
• Collaborate with validation teams on compliance, stress, hot-plug, power-management, error-injection, and multi-protocol concurrency testing.
• Provide root-cause analysis and implement fixes for protocol issues identified during validation or in customer environments.

Requirements:

• Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field.
• At least 3 years of software or firmware applications engineering experience.
• At least 3 years of experience with SSD controller or firmware architecture.
• Strong C/C++ programming and data-structure skills.
• Hands-on experience with JTAG or ICE debuggers.
• Experience using version-control tools such as Git.
• Ability to work independently with minimal day-to-day supervision and contribute effectively in a small team environment.
• Fast learner and collaborative team player.
• Strong oral, written, presentation, and technical documentation skills.

Benefits:

• Competitive salary differentiated by performance.
• Annual merit increases.
• Year-end bonus.
• RSUs for eligible employees.
• Invention and patent awards.
• 401(k) employer matching.
• Length-of-service awards.
• Comprehensive health insurance plans for eligible employees and dependents.