Staff Engineer - Embedded Software

Staff Embedded Software Engineer, MCU Software

Ambiq's mission is to enable intelligence everywhere by delivering the lowest power semiconductor solutions. Ambiq is a pioneer and a leading provider of ultra-low-power semiconductor solutions based on our proprietary and patented sub- and near-threshold technologies. With the increasing power requirements of artificial intelligence (AI) computing, our customers are increasingly relying on our solutions to deliver AI to edge environments. Our hardware and software innovations fundamentally deliver a multi-fold improvement in power consumption over traditional semiconductor designs without expensive process geometry scaling. We started in 2010, addressing the needs of battery-powered devices at the edge, where power consumption challenges were most profound. As of the beginning of 2025, we've shipped more than 270 million units worldwide.

Our innovative and fast-moving teams of design, research, development, production, marketing, sales, and operations are spread across several continents, including the US (Austin and San Jose), Taiwan (Hsinchu), China (Shenzhen and Shanghai), Japan (Tokyo), and Singapore. We value relentless technology innovation, a deep commitment to customer success, collaborative problem-solving, and an enthusiastic pursuit of energy efficiency. We embrace candidates who also share these same values. The successful candidate must be self-motivated, creative, and comfortable learning and driving exciting new technologies. We encourage and nurture an environment for growth and opportunities to work on complex, meaningful, and challenging projects that will create a lasting impact and shape the future of technology. Join us on our quest for 100 billion devices. The edge intelligence revolution starts here.

This role will be on-site and will require 5 days in office presence.

As the Staff Embedded Software Engineer, MCU Software at Ambiq, you will drive the development and testing of core MCU functions in AmbiqSuite SDK on Ambiq SoC devices and emulation platforms. These include features like memory management (Cache, MMU, MPU), data movement (DMA), and general MCU management. You will also be contributing to defining and implementing the multicore software framework and related infrastructure.

This role will work within our global MCU software development team and will work closely with the architecture team and the local MCU SoC design team, focusing on MCU software development and test activities.

A successful candidate should be a fast-learning, result-driven, and self-motivated team player with an "always learning" mindset. He should possess an inquiring spirit and be comfortable working in a lab environment, with the ability to execute hands-on debugging for embedded systems.

The person in this role will be responsible for extending the hardware adaptation layer (HAL) and device drivers of the SDK to new platforms as well as enhancing its features and content, with a focus on memory management and data movement subsystems. The candidate will be involved in the extension of the SDK to cover new MCU members of the family as they become available.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design, development, and maintenance of the HAL interfaces for memory management unit (MMU) and Data Movement Engine (DME) subsystems, as well as Caches, MPU, and other general MCU management.
• Design, develop, and maintain examples and software test cases for these blocks.
• Take a key role in the pre-silicon verification on FPGA, as well as post-silicon bring up, verification, performance optimization, and debug, focusing on these blocks.
• Design, develop, and maintain real-time OS ports for Ambiq MCUs.
• Support design verification (DV) and validation engineers, field engineers, and key customers as needed.

Requirements

• MS in ECE or Computer Science and 6+ years of experience or BS ECE/CS with 8+ years of experience, with at least 3 years focusing on MMU, caches, DMA, or related subsystems;
• Deep understanding of ARM architectures, M-profile preferred;
• Strong understanding with MMUs including virtual memory, paging, and physical address translation;
• Solid experience with DMA engines, chained and scatter/gather transfers. Hands-on experience profiling and optimizing memory access patterns, DMA throughput, and cache usage;
• Experience with memory protection, isolation, and secure DMA for trusted execution environments is a plus.
• Experience working with multicore embedded processing systems is preferred;
• Deep understanding of embedded RTOS required, Zephyr and FreeRTOS preferred;
• Experience with developing embedded MCU code in C and assembly language on Arm Cortex-M Processors;
• Experience with at least one MCU IDE from ARM, Keil, IAR, Eclipse, Ozone or other;
• Good hands-on experience on lab equipment such as oscilloscopes, logic analyzers etc., for debugging issues;
• Experience with Jira, Confluence, and collaboration tools;
• Experience with source code control systems (git) required;
• Understanding of software testing and test automation principles;
• Excellent problem-solving skills dealing with complex system-level issues related to HW/SW debug;
• Experience with scripting languages required, and python experience is specifically desirable;
• Strong communication and documentation skills.

What You'll Need:

Ambiq is a company that values continued technology innovation, fanatical attention to customer needs, collaborative decision-making, and, above all, enthusiasm for energy efficiency. The incoming candidate should embrace these same values. The successful candidate must be self-motivated, creative, and comfortable learning exciting new technologies. This is an opportunity for growth and work on complex, interesting, and challenging projects.

Most importantly, the successful candidate will be able to live the Ambiq Shared Values:

• Innovate: We tenaciously find ways to break down the barriers to possible solutions
• Collaborate: We proactively communicate and encourage each other to be better.
• Focus: We keep the voice of the customer at the center of everything we do.
• Learn: We strive for continuous improvement and are always curious.
• Achieve: We execute on quality and follow through on our commitments.