Senior Silicon Firmware Engineer

Microsoft Silicon, Cloud Hardware, and Infrastructure Engineering (SCHIE) is the team behind Microsoft’s expanding Cloud Infrastructure and responsible for powering Microsoft’s “Intelligent Cloud” mission. SCHIE delivers the core infrastructure and foundational technologies for Microsoft's over 200 online businesses including Bing, MSN, Office 365, Xbox Live, Teams, OneDrive, and the Microsoft Azure platform globally with our server and data center infrastructure, security and compliance, operations, globalization, and manageability solutions. Our focus is on smart growth, high efficiency, and delivering a trusted experience to customers and partners worldwide and we are looking for engineers to help achieve that mission.

The Compute Silicon & Manufacturing Engineering (CSME) organization within SCHIE is responsible for design, development, manufacturing and packaging of Microsoft's state-of-the-art computer chips, notably the Azure Cobalt. Our solutions provide sustainable strategic advantages to Microsoft and enable our customers to achieve more.

As Microsoft's cloud business continues to grow the ability to deploy new offerings and hardware infrastructure on time, in high volume with high quality and lowest cost is of paramount importance. To achieve this goal, the Compute Silicon & Manufacturing Engineering team is instrumental in defining and delivering operational measures of success for hardware manufacturing, improving the planning process, quality, delivery, scale and sustainability related to Microsoft cloud hardware. We are looking for engineers with a dedicated passion for customer focused solutions, insight and industry knowledge to envision and implement future technical solutions that will manage and optimize the Cloud infrastructure. 

We are looking for a Senior Silicon Firmware Engineer to join the team to support our mission as a key role with Cobalt firmware design, development, and silicon enabling.

The silicon computing development team is seeking passionate, driven and intellectually curious engineers to join our silicon  firmware team covering firmware architecture, development, integration, and quality assurance, for our projects.  This team member will be involved in numerous projects within Microsoft developing firmware for custom silicon on a diverse set of systems.  We are responsible for delivering cutting-edge, custom SoC designs that can perform complex and high-performance functions in the most efficient manner.  In this high impact role on the team, you will be responsible to:

• Develop, document, review, and maintain low-level silicon firmware in partnership with hardware design, validation, and software teams.
• Analyze hardware specifications to architect and implement silicon firmware for IP blocks, including bring-up sequences, power management, security flows, and peripheral initialization.
• Execute firmware development across the full silicon lifecycle — from RTL simulation and FPGA prototyping through emulation, silicon bring-up, and production.
• Participate in hardware/firmware co-design to define register interfaces, firmware-visible behaviors, and optimal hardware/firmware partitioning during the design phase.

• Cross multiple firmware disciplines and domains — boot, security, power, telemetry, debug — adapting to evolving needs throughout the development cycle.
• Perform firmware integration, packaging, and releases to partners and stakeholders with clear versioning and dependency tracking.
• Build automation and tooling to accelerate development and enable validation partners with maximum code and collateral reuse.
• Participate in and champion Agile practices emphasizing quality, team accountability, continuous integration, and iterative improvement.
• Coordinate priorities and activities with cross-functional engineering stakeholders to deliver committed milestones.
• Collaborate with IP providers to integrate third-party components, resolve specification ambiguities, and align firmware with hardware deliverables.
• Deliver high-quality, well-tested silicon firmware on schedule with professional integrity — challenge the status quo with a growth mindset.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Doctorate in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field AND 1+ year(s) technical engineering experience
  • OR Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field AND 4+ years technical engineering experience
  • OR Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field AND 5+ years technical engineering experience
  • OR equivalent experience. 
    

Other Requirements:

Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role. These requirements include, but are not limited to, the following specialized security screenings:

• Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.
• This role will require access to information that is controlled for export under export control regulations, potentially under the U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations or Export Administration Regulations, the EU Dual Use Regulation, and/or other export control regulations. As a condition of employment, the successful candidate will be required to provide either proof of their country of citizenship or proof of their US. residency or other protected status (e.g., under 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3)) for assessment of eligibility to access the export-controlled information. To meet this legal requirement, and as a condition of employment, the successful candidate’s citizenship will be verified with a valid passport. Lawful permanent residents, refugees, and asylees may verify status using other documents, where applicable. 

Preferred Qualifications:

• BS/MS in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, or Computer Engineering with 7+ years of industry experience.
• Proficient understanding of computer architecture, embedded systems design, real-time operating systems (RTOS), and hardware/software co-validation methodologies.
• Proficiency in C/C++ for embedded systems, including object-oriented design, hardware abstraction layers, and deterministic interface contracts.
• Experience with debugging tools and techniques for hardware-software integration (e.g., JTAG/SWD, logic analyzers, trace tools).
• Ability to communicate technical designs and trade-offs effectively across firmware, hardware, and validation teams.
• Experience developing and validating firmware for standard hardware interfaces (SPI, DDR, USB, PCIe, I2C, CXL).
• Experience with firmware-side bring-up of new silicon, including pre-silicon emulation and post-silicon debug.
• Ability to comprehend the full software stack from high-level code through RTOS scheduling to representative assembler instruction streams at runtime.
• Experience defining and enforcing hardware/firmware interface contracts and compliance test suites.
• Proficiency in Python for test automation, data analysis, and scripting of validation workflows.
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and DevOps practices applied to embedded/firmware build and test environments, including Azure DevOps (repos, pipelines, boards, and test plans).
• Familiarity with formal or structured verification methodologies (e.g., model checking, property-based testing, coverage-driven validation).
• Experience mentoring engineers or leading technical workstreams across firmware and validation disciplines.

#SCHIE #CSME

Silicon Engineering IC4 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $119,800 - $234,700 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $160,200 - $261,000 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:
https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay

This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.