Firmware Engineer (AI Hardware)

Location: On-site in Austin, Texas, United States

Salary: $125,000–$150,000 per year, plus equity

Company

hirify.global is an AI hardware startup developing silicon photonics and programmable metasurface technology for energy-efficient large-scale AI inference.

What you will do

• Develop low-level firmware to orchestrate LLM workloads across custom hybrid optical-electronic accelerator components.
• Implement system and board management for the accelerator platform.
• Create debugging, profiling, testing, and validation tools for firmware and hardware interaction.
• Collaborate with hardware engineers to define software-hardware interfaces and optimize end-to-end performance.
• Develop firmware interface documentation and specifications.
• Support customer integration and provide technical guidance.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related field.
• 3–5 years of professional experience in firmware engineering, embedded systems, or low-level systems programming.
• High proficiency in embedded C++, plus Python for tooling and automation.
• Experience with embedded systems, hardware interfaces, register-level programming, memory-mapped I/O, and bus protocols such as I2C, SPI, UART, CAN, or LIN.
• Knowledge of computer architecture, memory hierarchies, parallel computing, embedded processors such as ARM or RISC-V, and associated toolchains.
• Experience with testing and validation, CI/CD, debugging tools, and hardware-software co-design.

Nice to have

• Master’s degree in a relevant engineering or computer science field.
• Experience with PCIe, Ethernet, AMBA, AXI, Infiniband, multi-node or multi-processor embedded systems, IPC, and shared memory.
• Experience with bare-metal programming, FreeRTOS, Zephyr, virtual platforms, cross-compilation, Docker, OTA updates, and adaptive firmware architectures.
• Experience with AI/ML accelerators, high-performance computing, low-latency design, thermal and power optimization, and LLM architectures.
• Familiarity with RTL, Verilog/SystemVerilog, hardware simulation, and structured human-supervised AI coding workflows.

Culture & Benefits

• Collaborative engineering environment focused on photonics, AI, and custom accelerator technology.
• Health plan premiums covered in full for employees and dependents, with HSA contributions.
• Unlimited PTO.
• 401(k) matching and stock option opportunities.
• Dental, vision, life, hospital, critical illness, and accident insurance, with personalized plan options.