Sr Staff Software Engineer - Power Management

About Ambiq Micro, Inc.

• Ambiq is on a mission to enable intelligence everywhere — powering the AI edge revolution with the world's lowest-power semiconductor solutions.
• Built on our proprietary sub- and near-threshold technology, our chips deliver multi-fold improvements in energy efficiency without costly process scaling.
• Since 2010, we've shipped over 300 million units to customers building smarter wearables, medical devices, IoT products, and AI-powered edge applications.
• Our cross-functional teams span design, research, development, production, marketing, sales, and operations across Austin, Hsinchu, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Singapore.
• We move fast, tackle hard problems, and create space for people to grow through complex, meaningful work that shapes the future of technology.
• We're looking for self-motivated, creative problem-solvers who are eager to push technological limits and make a real impact in energy efficiency.

At Ambiq, we live by five values

• Innovate. Collaborate. Focus. Learn. Achieve.
• If that's you, join us — the intelligence everywhere revolution starts here.

Responsibilities

• The role encompasses the power management infrastructure, memory control and retention, clock management, low-power operating modes, and software techniques for optimizing system-level power consumption.
• Define software requirements and functional allocations based on evolving input from SoC hardware architects, product marketing, software architects, validation and software development teams.
• Design, develop, debug, profile, and optimize the AmbiqSuite SDK power management software, including power modeling and characterization under a wide range of operating conditions.
• Own the SoC software architecture, performance, and power optimization, identifying opportunities to reduce power consumption while maintaining system performance and functionality.
• Work closely with product marketing, field engineering, validation, and system test teams to understand customer use cases and translate them into software architecture, implementation, and test requirements.
• Serve as the technical authority for power management software, reviewing software designs, architecture, code, test plans, and validation results to ensure quality, performance, and low-power operation.
• Drive cross-functional technical discussions with hardware architects, firmware developers, validation, and IP vendors to resolve architectural issues and ensure successful product execution.
• Diagnose complex system-level issues spanning hardware and software, and evaluate architectural trade-offs to achieve the optimal balance of power, performance, cost, and implementation complexity.
• Develop software for low-power operating modes, clock management, memory retention, wake-up sequencing, and other power management infrastructure components.
• Define and implement methodologies, tools, and metrics for measuring, profiling, and optimizing software power consumption.
• Work with relevant teams to ensure power-optimized implementation of the RTOS ports for Ambiq SoCs.
• Provide technical leadership through design reviews, code reviews, technical mentoring, and by establishing software development best practices.

Requirements

• The successful candidate will have extensive experience in early-stage software architecture and hands-on embedded software development.
• They must have a proven track record of designing, implementing, debugging, profiling, and optimizing embedded software for ARM Cortex-M processors using an RTOS.
• Experience developing low-level firmware, power management software, device drivers, and hardware abstraction layers is essential.
• The ideal candidate is a strong technical leader who enjoys solving complex technical problems while remaining actively involved in software design, implementation, code reviews, and debugging.
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field.
• 10+ years of experience developing embedded software for ARM Cortex-M–based systems in bare-metal and RTOS environments.
• Expert-level C/C++ programming skills, with experience developing low-level firmware, device drivers, hardware abstraction layers (HAL), and startup code.
• Strong understanding of SoC architecture, including processor subsystems, memory hierarchy, bus interconnects, interrupts, DMA engines, cache architectures, memory protection, inter-processor communication, and shared memory systems.
• Proven experience designing, implementing, debugging, profiling, and optimizing software for ultra-low-power embedded systems.
• Strong understanding of embedded power management techniques, including clock management, voltage and frequency scaling, power domains, memory retention, clock gating, and low-power operating modes.
• Experience profiling and analyzing power consumption across software and hardware boundaries, including identifying and resolving system-level performance and power bottlenecks.
• Hands-on experience using embedded development and debug tools, including JTAG/SWD debuggers, oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, power analyzers, and software profiling tools.
• Experience developing software using modern software engineering practices, including Git-based source control, code reviews, continuous integration, and automated testing.
• Excellent analytical, problem-solving, and communication skills, with the ability to lead technical discussions across hardware and software disciplines.
• Familiarity with at least one MCU IDE on Windows from ARM/Keil, IAR, Eclipse, or others.
• The candidate must independently manage assigned tasks, prioritize workload, and meet deadlines with minimal supervision.
• Proactive problem-solving skills and the ability to seek clarification when needed are essential.
• Must be currently authorized to work in the United States for any employer.
• We do not sponsor or take over sponsorship of employment visas (now or in the future) for this role.

Preferred

• Experience with ARM assembly language is a plus.
• Experience defining software architectures and technical requirements for complex embedded systems is preferred.
• Knowledge of the power requirements of wireless protocols (BLE, WiFi, 802.15.4) is a plus.
• Experience working with FreeRTOS & Zephyr is preferred.

Work location

This role will be on-site 5 days a week in NW Austin.