Neural AI
Chief Firmware Engineer
Apple
Tesla
Qualcomm
Intel
Western Digital
Seagate
The job description
Tech stack. Firmware technology strategy and roadmapping, device security architecture, silicon vendor partnerships, engineering organization leadership and scaling, industry representation and standards, fleet-scale operational thinking, platform economics
About the role
You will serve as the company's top firmware authority, defining the technical vision governing every connected device the company designs and ships across all product lines. The chief firmware engineer establishes security architecture standards, platform strategy, silicon partnership direction, and the engineering culture that produces firmware customers never need to think about because it simply works flawlessly. Your technical judgment will safeguard the company's market reputation, shape its device strategy for the coming decade, and determine whether firmware becomes a durable competitive moat or a persistent organizational liability. This is the role where the deepest embedded systems mastery meets genuine executive accountability to the business.
What you will achieve
- Own the comprehensive company firmware technology strategy: platform architecture choices, security framework standards, development tooling investments, and silicon partnership priorities, each with clear documented rationale
- Approve major firmware architecture decisions and strategic technology bets across every product line with transparent reasoning and honest, quantified risk assessment
- Drive device security posture across the entire company: institutionalized threat modeling practice, secure development lifecycle enforcement, and measurable incident response readiness
- Represent the organization's firmware engineering and device security leadership credibly with key enterprise customers, strategic silicon partners, and at major industry forums
- Build and sustain a world-class firmware engineering organization through rigorous hiring standards, meaningful technical career ladders, and an authentic culture of mentorship
What you will bring
Must-haves
- 15+ years of firmware or embedded systems engineering with industry-recognized technical achievement across multiple product generations
- Demonstrated company-wide or industry-wide technical influence through firmware platforms, security architectures, or engineering standards with lasting multi-year adoption
- Profound expertise spanning firmware domains: bootloaders and security, wireless connectivity, hard real-time systems, power management, and low-level hardware interaction
- Proven experience setting multi-year technology strategy and making portfolio-level decisions that balance technical excellence, business value, and organizational risk
- Genuine executive presence: advising chief executives and boards of directors on technical risk exposure, security posture, competitive positioning, and strategic capital investment
- Documented track record of building firmware organizations from the ground up: hiring exceptional engineers, developing technical leaders, and retaining top talent through challenging periods
- BS in Electrical or Computer Engineering; advanced technical degree strongly preferred
Nice-to-haves
- Substantial patent portfolio in embedded systems or device security demonstrating inventions with real commercial deployment
- Formal standards body leadership roles (Matter, OCF, FiRa Alliance, or similar) with published specifications adopted by the industry
- Experience directing large-scale fleet security incident response under genuine operational and public pressure
- Visible public technical thought leadership: invited keynote presentations, published books or papers, or widely cited engineering work