Senior Embedded SERDES Firmware Engineer

About The Role
We are seeking an experienced firmware leader to architect, develop, and bring up embedded firmware for advanced Ethernet SERDES, Retimers and diagnostics. This role spans SERDES, calibration, manufacturing and test firmware, and close collaboration with SFP modules, ASIC, manufacturing, test, calibration, and reliability teams. The ideal candidate brings deep experience in firmware, defines ARM and RISC-V-based control architectures, generates digital requirements for custom control ASICs, drives robust firmware development flow and CI, and mentors engineers across programs.
What You'll Do
Architecture & Development: Architect, develop, debug, and release production-grade embedded firmware for next-generation optical engines and optical module platforms (SFP/QSFP/OSFP).
ASIC & System Specification: Define digital requirements, MCU/processor choices, memory maps, boot sequence, and peripheral requirements for custom optical control ASICs—including control, telemetry, monitoring, interfaces, diagnostics, MACsec security engines, and PTP hardware timestamping.
Cross-Functional System Integration: Partner closely with ASIC, RTL, and verification teams to drive end-to-end architecture definition, implementation alignment, board-level bring-up, and system-level debug.
Protocol & High-Speed Interfaces: Implement and maintain firmware for high-speed protocols (Ethernet, PCIe, SerDes, link training, interoperability, and compliance), time-synchronization stacks (PTP/IEEE 1588), link encryption (MACsec), and host-facing interfaces.
Platform Bring-Up & Diagnostics: Lead initial firmware and digital bring-up for new optical modules, engines, and control ASICs; execute root-cause failure analysis across lab bring-up, qualification, and field-return scenarios.
Manufacturing & Calibration Engines: Design and deploy firmware for manufacturing test, screening, calibration engines, and lookup tables to enable high-yield volume production.
DevOps & CI/CD Process Improvement: Establish and refine the firmware development workflow, incorporating modern build/release pipelines, automated test suites, regression coverage, and Continuous Integration (CI).
What We're Looking For
Education & Experience: BS, MS, or PhD in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or equivalent, with 8–10+ years of professional experience in embedded firmware development.
Embedded Software Core: Master-level proficiency in C and C-based SDK development, with exposure to modern C++ or Rust.
Hardware Architecture & Interfaces: Strong background defining MCU requirements (ARM and RISC-V) and working with low-level buses (I2C, I3C, SPI, MDIO, GPIO).
Scripting & Automation: High proficiency in Python for pre/post-processing, test automation, and firmware Quality Control (QC).
DevOps & Tooling: Hands-on experience with GCC/Make, Git/GitHub, Doxygen, CI/CD pipelines, and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) automation.
Modern Development: Experience utilizing AI-driven coding, refactoring, and automated test generation tools within an embedded firmware workflow.
Leadership: Demonstrated experience leading cross-functional bring-up efforts and mentoring engineering teams.
Preferred Qualifications
Security & Network Synchronization: Direct experience developing and integrating MACsec (802.1AE) key management/data-plane acceleration and PTP (IEEE 1588) hardware timestamping / clock recovery synchronization in optical hardware.
Embedded Security: Practical experience implementing Root of Trust (RoT), Secure Boot, and cryptographic/secure firmware update mechanisms (FOTA/UFOTA).
SerDes & Diagnostic Frameworks: Hands-on experience architecting SerDes management, link-training tuning, and real-time diagnostic frameworks.
Quality & Reliability: Experience driving product qualification, stress testing, reliability investigations, and board-level failure analysis (FA).
About TYLsemi, Inc.
The Opportunity
The AI infrastructure market is exploding. Every hyperscaler, every cloud provider, every AI company is building custom silicon. But they all face the same problem: how do you connect hundreds of chips, deliver clean power at scale, and move terabits of data without melting the package?
That's what we solve. TYLsemi builds the chiplet infrastructure IP — the IO, power delivery, and interconnect building blocks — that makes AI/HPC systems actually work at scale.
This isn't a nice-to-have. It's the critical path.
Why Now
The Market Window
The semiconductor industry is going through its biggest architectural shift in 40 years:
Moore's Law is dead. 2nm and beyond delivers marginal performance gains. The future is chiplets, not monolithic dies.
Custom silicon is now mainstream. Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, OpenAI — they're all designing their own ASICs. The $50B custom silicon market is growing 30% annually.
IO and power are the bottleneck. Solve hard problems and provide something which is a category in itself.
Translation: We're entering the market at exactly the moment when every major AI/HPC player needs what we're building, and their alternatives are disappearing.
Culture & Team: How We Work
No Politics, No Bureaucracy
There are no layers, no approval chains, no corporate theater.
If you have an idea, we test it. If it works, we ship it.
No endless meetings, no PowerPoint presentations to convince middle management.
Remote-Friendly, Global Team
US team: Bay Area preferred, but we hire the best people regardless of location
India team: Building a world-class design center in Bangalore
Move Fast, Ship Real Products
We're not a research project. We have paying customers, committed capital, and aggressive timelines.
This is a company, not a lifestyle business. We're building to win.
What We Value
Ownership mindset. You're not here to execute someone else's roadmap. You're here to define it.
Bias for action. We move fast. Analysis paralysis doesn't fly here.
Deep technical expertise. This is hard engineering. We need people who've shipped real silicon and debugged real hardware.
Low ego, high standards. We don't care about titles or politics. We care about results.
The Ask
If you're reading this, you're probably comfortable. You have a good job at a stable company with all the benefits.
We're asking you to walk away from that and bet on us.
Here's Why You Should
The market is real. AI infrastructure spending is $200B+ annually and growing 40% YoY. Every hyperscaler needs what we're building.
The team has done this before. We've built and exited semiconductor companies at scale. This isn't our first rodeo.
The traction is de-risked. We have LOIs, strategic investors, and a clear path to revenue.
The work is consequential. You're not optimizing someone's ad click-through rate. You're building the silicon infrastructure that powers AI.
This is the bet. Join us and build something that matters.
Or stay comfortable. No judgment.
But if you're the kind of person who wants to take the shot, we'd love to talk.
READY TO JOIN?

Work arrangement
Yes