Principal Firmware/Diagnostics Engineer

Overview

Lead firmware and diagnostics development across the full product lifecycle, from hardware bring-up and boot loaders through runtime services and field upgrades, as a technical authority and mentor in the Hardware Development Team.

What you'll do

• Uphold F5's Business Code of Ethics and promptly report violations of the Code or other company policies.
• Act as a technical authority, establishing standards for secure boot, code signing, anti-rollback protections, measured boot, vulnerability remediation, and incident response.
• Lead firmware and diagnostics design for new products, including architecture definition, functional specifications, and requirements development.
• Work with cross-functional teams to align requirements and shepherd PRDs into executable plans.
• Assist in the planning of work across boot, board bring-up, drivers, runtime services, manufacturing/test firmware, and in-field update mechanisms.
• Define telemetry, detection, and recovery strategies for firmware integrity, and align to relevant standards (e.g., FIPS 140-3, FedRAMP implications as applicable).
• Define automated build, test, and validation, ensuring repeatable releases and traceable artifacts across SKUs.
• Drive design for manufacturability, testability, and reliability across all phases of development.
• Partner with MFG and Global Services to define factory programming, golden images, and resilient upgrade strategies (A/B, recovery partitions).
• Research and evaluate emerging technologies to enhance existing products and guide new product directions.
• Oversee and mentor engineers, providing technical guidance and reviewing work to ensure quality and efficiency.
• Serve and guide other team members through challenges, assuring their growth and project success.
• Conduct internal and external technical presentations and disseminate knowledge within the Hardware Development Team.
• Develop and maintain schedules for deliverables, ensuring timely and high-quality documentation and testing through holistic ownership over assigned product areas and projects.
• Provide status, risks, and decisions to leadership; translate technical details into business outcomes.
• Interface with suppliers and manufacturing partners for validation and issue resolution.
• Support sustaining engineering for legacy products and assist in manufacturing training for new designs.
• Participate in design reviews and contribute to continuous improvement of design processes and standards.

What you'll need

• Understand and comply with F5 internal processes and requirements.
• BS in Computer Science or equivalent required.
• 10+ years of experience in embedded/firmware engineering.
• Advanced troubleshooting skills at board and system levels.
• Extensive experience with Arm/x86 platforms, embedded Linux, secure elements, and measured boot pipelines.
• Extensive experience with C/C++, low-level debugging, and board bring-up (oscilloscope/logic analyzer/JTAG).
• Extensive experience with AMI Aptio V UEFI BIOS, OpenBMC, AMI MegaRAC/SPX, IPMI and Redfish.
• Extensive experience with boot architecture (UEFI/BIOS, bootloaders), BMC, PFR, TPM, SPI/QSPI flash, IO peripherals, and runtime firmware.
• Extensive experience with buses/protocols (I2C/I3C, SPI, UART, DDR, PCIe, GPIO, PMIC), and memory/storage (NOR/NAND, DRAM, SSD).
• Extensive experience with security protocols and knowledge of multiple Platform Root of Trust devices and secure boot mechanisms.
• Experience with source code version control tools such as Git and GitLab.
• Experience with CI/CD and Agile software development.
• Prior work with factory programming, golden image workflows, and recovery strategies (A/B, rollback protections).
• Exposure to cloud-connected devices and policy/version orchestration across fleets.
• Familiarity with relevant industry standards and compliance requirements.
• Excellent communication and cross-functional collaboration skills.

Nice to have

• MS in Computer Science.
• Compliance and security standards (e.g., FIPS 140-3, NIST SP 800-193).

Details

• Location: Bangalore (Non-SEZ).