Firmware Engineer Jobs in California

INTRODUCTION

We are looking for the best

About us

42dot is a mobility AI company committed to solving mobility challenges with software and AI. As the Global Software Center of Hyundai Motor Group, 42dot pioneers the future of mobility by advancing the development of software-defined vehicles. We develop safety-first, user-centric software-defined vehicle technologies that deliver the latest performance through continuous updates like smartphones. By advancing software and AI technology, 42dot envisions a world where everything is connected and moves autonomously through a self-managing urban transportation operating system.

ABOUT THE ROLE

As a Sr. Staff Firmware Engineer, you will design and implement the mission-critical secure boot-chain, flash partition architecture, and hardware-enforced isolation layers for our next-generation Software-Defined Vehicle (SDV) platform. This is a pure embedded C engineering role focused on high availability, extreme durability, and fail-safe robustness. You will architect the boundaries where bare silicon meets low-level execution environments, developing a zero-downtime system that handles concurrent inter-core communication and guarantees autonomous systems never experience a field failure.

Responsibilities

- Architect the Secure Boot-Chain: Design and optimize the multi-stage secure boot sequence—from immutable mask ROM and Primary Bootloaders (PBL) to Secondary Bootloaders (SBL/U-Boot)—ensuring execution integrity.
- Hardware-Enforced Isolation: Implement and configure advanced hardware firewall technologies (such as NXP xRDC / XRDC4) and core-level Memory Protection Units (MPUs).
- Manage Cohort/Domain IDs, Master Domain Assignment Controllers (MDAC), and Peripheral Access Controllers (PAC) to achieve strict resource isolation, peripheral partitioning, and fault domain segregation.
- Fail-Safe A/B Update Layouts: Implement atomic A/B firmware slot update schemes and dual-bank partition architectures.
- Design the low-level state machines for partition switching, background flashing, and automatic runtime fallback loops.

QUALIFICATIONS

- Hardware Root of Trust & Security: Configure hardware-based cryptographic enclaves (HSMs, TPMs, or ARM TrustZone).
- Develop firmware controls for secure key storage, device attestation, and anti-rollback protection via eFuses or secure flash memory.
- High-Performance Inter-Core Communication: Design, implement, and optimize low-latency Inter-Process Communication (IPC) and Inter-Core Communication (ICC) mechanisms utilizing shared memory architectures, hardware semaphores, and zero-copy data paths.
- High-Durability Storage Systems: Package and deploy low-level block drivers and fault-tolerant flash file systems (e.g., eMMC, UFS, QSPI).
- Implement advanced wear-leveling and delta compression techniques to maximize flash lifespan and minimize bus bandwidth.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

- Pure Firmware Development: Write high-performance, deterministic embedded C tailored for resource-constrained environments, ensuring freedom from interference (FFI) and tight control over task scheduling.
- Defensive Engineering: Protect low-level execution paths against physical and electrical attack vectors, including voltage manipulation, clock glitching, and unauthorized side-channel access.
- Low-Level Hardware Integration: Lead physical hardware bring-up and verification in the lab using JTAG/SWD debuggers, logic analyzers, and oscilloscopes.
- Validate low-level memory protections, security states, and low-to-high speed peripheral/bus interference.