Firmware Engineer

About This Role

This firmware engineering role in the Wireless Connectivity Silicon Team at Apple involves the design, development, and bring-up of innovative wireless silicon for various Apple products like the iPhone and Mac. It suits a forward-thinking, dedicated, highly competent, and experienced engineer passionate about solving tough problems in a creative and collaborative environment.

Responsibilities

• Deeply understand components/modules within wireless communication systems and their corresponding calibration and impairment reduction techniques
• Develop methods/algorithms to alleviate hardware induced impairments by calibration, cancellation, and other applicable techniques
• Perform PHY firmware architecture and design, including calibrations, real-time processing flows, and collaboration with RF hardware, microcode, and MAC layer
• Develop highly efficient designs delivering outstanding performance, optimizing power and memory footprints while meeting hard-real-time latency requirements
• Debug real-time systems with limited visibility, working hands-on with development boards and lab equipment
• Collaborate with Radio, MAC, and Systems engineering teams to architect, define, and implement innovative algorithms, calibrations, and protocols
• Support pre-silicon validation efforts, including simulation, emulation, and FPGA prototyping
• Develop SoC test and calibration capabilities for chip, module, and product factories
• Support post-silicon bring-up, validation, performance characterization, system integration, and debugging
• Repeatedly measure and optimize results using various test harnesses
• Automate calibration and verification processes

Requirements

• BS with 3+ years of industry experience
• Strong embedded SW fundamentals, including knowledge of design and development-flows, real-time constraints, concurrency, multi-processor systems, and memory management
• Knowledge of wireless systems and protocols such as Wi-Fi or LTE/NR
• Excellent problem-solving skills to address technical issues during design, development, and maintenance phases
• Deep understanding of data structures, object-oriented design, and system architecture in an embedded environment
• Strong software engineering skills including design, development (using C, C++), scripting (Python), and debugging
• Familiarity with 32-bit micro-controller architecture, low-level hardware interfaces, register and interrupt programming, bare-metal software development, clock and power management
• Experience with configuration (GIT, Perforce) and release management, continuous integration, unit and regression testing
• Strong understanding of design strategies for maintainability, scalability, and code reuse