Embedded System Firmware Engineer
Apple
Sunnyvale, CA, USA
USD 147,400-272,100 / year + Equity
Posted on Feb 20, 2026
Do you love the challenge of advancing a widely accepted technology? In the Wireless Technology Engineering group, you’ll be responsible for bringing groundbreaking wireless connectivity to the world through cellular, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, and more. You’ll design, develop, and patent the next generation of our state-of-the-art connectivity technologies. You’ll collaborate across departments to help craft wireless solutions that elevate the customer experience with Apple products and services. Our goal is to ensure nothing stands in the way of our customers’ connections with their devices. If you join us, you’ll help build world-renowned wireless systems so flawless that they almost feel like magic.
The Apple Cellular Platform Software team is looking for a cross-disciplinary firmware engineer passionate about embedded systems. In this role, you will work at the hardware/software interface and develop a range of low-level device drivers that directly control hardware, such as CPUs, memory, DMA, timers, interrupts, GPIOs, I2C, SPI, and hardware loggers. There will be significant collaboration with hardware designers to understand, improve, and document hardware/software interfaces. Candidates must be knowledgeable and comfortable working across both hardware and software domains.
- Design and develop Board Support Package (BSP) for RTOS bootstrapping.
- Design and develop unit tests to ensure software quality.
- Support pre- and post-silicon validation, bring-up and performance profiling.
- Conduct software debugging using debuggers, traces, and crash logs.
- Perform software integration and manage branches with version control tools.
- Review hardware specifications and assist with hardware debugging.
- Support factory testing and resolve critical issues on-site.
- Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering (EE), Computer Engineering (CE), or related field.
- 5+ years of experience developing embedded firmware or kernel-mode drivers.
- Fluency in data structures and algorithms commonly used in an RTOS, implemented in C/C++ and assembly.
- Solid understanding of embedded system components such as CPUs, memory hierarchies, DMA, timers, interrupt control units, and interconnect buses.
- Deep knowledge of real-time operating system (RTOS) concepts such as thread/process scheduling and synchronization, exception handling, virtual memory management and inter-process communication.
- Experience with low-level hardware components (Memory, DMA, Timer, GPIOs, UART, SPI, I2C, etc.).
- Experience using Python as a support language for test automation, data analysis, and tool development to aid firmware validation and regression testing.
- Experience with pre-silicon bringup and validation on FPGA and emulation platforms.
- Experience with cycle-accurate modeling and performance analysis.
Apple is an equal opportunity employer that is committed to inclusion and diversity. We seek to promote equal opportunity for all applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, Veteran status, or other legally protected characteristics. Learn more about your EEO rights as an applicant.