Silicon Validation Firmware Engineer

Meta's Silicon Engineering team designs and delivers custom ASICs and SoCs that power products across Infrastructure, Reality Labs, and beyond. As a Silicon Validation Firmware Engineer at the senior level, you will develop and own firmware infrastructure used to validate custom silicon from pre-silicon emulation through post-silicon bring-up. You will work at the intersection of hardware and software, building low-level firmware, validation frameworks, and debug tooling that accelerate silicon readiness and ensure the reliability of Meta's custom chips at scale.

Silicon Validation Firmware Engineer Responsibilities:

• Develop and maintain low-level validation firmware in C/C targeting custom ASICs across emulation, FPGA, and silicon platforms
• Lead pre-silicon and post-silicon validation efforts by authoring and executing firmware-driven test plans covering CPU subsystems, memory controllers, cache hierarchies, and high-speed interfaces
• Bring up and debug complex SoC interfaces including PCIe, DDR, USB, and proprietary interconnects on emulation platforms and physical silicon
• Build and maintain firmware infrastructure including bootloaders, hardware abstraction layers, and register-level drivers to support validation and characterization workflows
• Collaborate with RTL design, architecture, and physical design teams to identify and root-cause silicon bugs, correlating pre-silicon simulation results with post-silicon behavior
• Define and drive firmware validation methodology improvements that reduce bring-up cycle time and improve coverage across silicon generations
• Develop automated test to enable continuous validation across emulation, FPGA prototyping, and silicon bring-up environments
• Partner with hardware and software teams to support hardware-software co-design decisions and ensure firmware readiness at each silicon milestone
• Contribute to silicon readiness reviews by documenting validation coverage, known issues, and risk assessments for key subsystems
  
  

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, relevant technical field, or equivalent practical experience
• 6 years of experience developing validation firmware or embedded software for custom ASICs in C/C
• 3 years of experience with pre-silicon and post-silicon debug using tools such as Lauterbach, JTAG-based debuggers, or equivalent on physical silicon or FPGA platforms
• Experience with EDA tools and scripting languages used to build tools and flows for complex emulation environments
• Experience developing hardware abstraction layers, bootloaders, or low-level drivers for custom silicon platforms
  
  

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with SoC architecture including CPU cores, memory subsystems, cache hierarchies, and on-chip interconnects
• Experience enabling validation across multiple pre-silicon environments including emulation and FPGA prototyping alongside physical silicon bring-up
• Familiarity with hardware-software co-design workflows and contributing to architecture or microarchitecture decisions from a firmware validation perspective
• Experience with machine learning or computer vision accelerator subsystems at the hardware-software integration level
• Demonstrated ability to integrate AI tools to optimize/redesign workflows and drive measurable impact (e.g., efficiency gains, quality improvements)
• Experience adhering to and implementing responsible, ethical AI practices (e.g., risk assessment, bias mitigation, quality and accuracy reviews)
• Demonstrated ongoing AI skill development (e.g., prompt/context engineering, agent orchestration) and staying current with emerging AI technologies
  
  

About Meta:

Meta builds technologies that help people connect, find communities, and grow businesses. When Facebook launched in 2004, it changed the way people connect. Apps like Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp further empowered billions around the world. Now, Meta is moving beyond 2D screens toward immersive experiences like augmented and virtual reality to help build the next evolution in social technology. People who choose to build their careers by building with us at Meta help shape a future that will take us beyond what digital connection makes possible today—beyond the constraints of screens, the limits of distance, and even the rules of physics.

Meta is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, sexual stereotypes, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. We also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law. Meta participates in the E-Verify program in certain locations, as required by law. Please note that Meta may leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies in connection with applications for employment.

Meta is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities in our recruiting process. If you need any assistance or accommodations due to a disability, please let us know at accommodations-ext@meta.com.

$146,000/year to $209,000/year bonus equity benefits

Individual compensation is determined by skills, qualifications, experience, and location. Compensation details listed in this posting reflect the base hourly rate, monthly rate, or annual salary only, and do not include bonus, equity or sales incentives, if applicable. In addition to base compensation, Meta offers benefits. Learn more about benefits at Meta.