Firmware & Diagnostics Architect

At Cadence, we hire and develop leaders and innovators who want to make an impact on the world of technology.

Firmware & Diagnostics Architect to lead the architecture, design, and evolution of firmware and diagnostic technologies for next-generation high-performance computing, prototyping, and hardware acceleration systems. This highly visible technical leadership role will define the long-term strategy for platform firmware, system diagnostics, telemetry, observability, validation, and automated recovery.

The ideal candidate is passionate about solving complex system-level challenges and has a proven track record of architecting firmware and diagnostic solutions for large-scale hardware platforms.

About Cadence

Help us solve what others can’t.

Responsibilities

• You will work across hardware, software, validation, manufacturing, and customer support teams to improve product reliability, accelerate root-cause analysis, and deliver exceptional customer experiences.
• You'll Do Define Platform Architecture Lead the architecture of firmware, diagnostics, telemetry, and health-monitoring frameworks.
• Develop scalable solutions for platform management, observability, fault detection, and automated recovery.
• Establish common diagnostic frameworks that can be leveraged across multiple product generations.
• Partner with hardware architects to improve platform serviceability and debuggability.
• Reliability and Quality Define strategies for proactive health monitoring and predictive fault detection.
• Improve system resiliency through intelligent diagnostics and recovery mechanisms.
• Drive architectural improvements that reduce customer downtime and simplify issue resolution.
• Establish platform-wide reliability and serviceability requirements.
• Enable Next-Generation Platforms Lead technical strategy for board bring-up, system validation, manufacturing test, and field diagnostics.
• Define validation methodologies covering firmware, connectivity, memory, power, thermal, and performance subsystems.
• Drive design reviews and technical readiness assessments for new products and technologies.
• Solve Complex System Challenges Lead investigations of critical customer and internal system issues.
• Guide root-cause analysis involving hardware, firmware, operating systems, and infrastructure components.
• Establish best practices for failure analysis and issue triage.
• Influence technical direction across multiple engineering organizations.
• Mentor senior engineers and technical leaders.
• Drive engineering standards, architectural reviews, and long-term technology roadmaps.
• Represent firmware and diagnostics architecture in executive and customer-facing discussions.

Requirements

• Qualifications BS with a minimum of 12 years of experience OR MS with a minimum of 10 years of experience OR PhD with a minimum of 8 years of experience 12+ years of experience in firmware, embedded systems, platform software, or hardware diagnostics.
• Strong expertise in C/C++ development for embedded systems.
• Proven experience architecting complex firmware or diagnostics solutions.
• Deep understanding of system architecture, hardware/software interactions, and low-level debugging.
• Experience with platform bring-up, system validation, and hardware debugging.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Excellent communication and technical leadership abilities.
• Sets You Apart Ability to navigate both architectural strategy and deep technical debugging.
• Strong customer focus and passion for solving real-world reliability challenges.
• Experience leading cross-functional technical initiatives.
• Track record of delivering technology that scales across multiple product generations.
• Ability to influence without authority and drive alignment across diverse engineering teams.

Preferred

• Qualifications Experience in several of the following areas: Platform firmware architecture and Board Management Controllers (BMC) Embedded Linux environments PCIe, Ethernet, DDR, and high-speed interfaces FPGA-based systems
• Diagnostics and health-monitoring frameworks
• Telemetry and observability infrastructure
• Hardware emulation or prototyping systems
• Automated validation and regression testing
• Manufacturing and field diagnostics
• Performance analysis and failure triage JTAG, logic analyzers, oscilloscopes, and hardware debug tools
• Python, Tcl, Bash, or similar automation technologies

Pay

• The annual salary range for California is $185,500 to $344,500.
• You may also be eligible to receive incentive compensation: bonus, equity, and benefits.
• Sales positions generally offer a competitive On Target Earnings (OTE) incentive compensation structure.
• Please note that the salary range is a guideline and compensation may vary based on factors such as qualifications, skill level, competencies and work location.

Benefits

• paid vacation and paid holidays, 401(k) plan with employer match, employee stock purchase plan, a variety of medical, dental and vision plan options, and more.
• We’re doing work that matters.