SoC Embedded Software Engineer

Overview

Cupertino, California, United States — Hardware

Silicon Engineering Group, you’ll help design and manufacture our next‑generation, high‑performance, power‑efficient processor and system‑on‑chip (SoC) solutions. You’ll enable Apple products by ensuring Apple Silicon SoCs can seamlessly and efficiently handle the tasks that make them beloved by millions. Joining this group means you’ll be responsible for crafting and building the technology that fuels all Apple devices.

As an SoC Embedded Software Engineer, you will craft and implement embedded software for SoC bringup and test. You will write software for Apple silicon in a bare‑metal environment, working closely with cross‑functional teams such as chip design, silicon validation, and product engineering, to bring up new silicon and ensure the quality and performance of every device manufactured.

As a SoC Embedded Software Engineer you will design, develop, and support high‑quality, scalable software implementations that enable rapid device test and characterization of Apple Silicon SoCs in an RTOS runtime environment. You will engage with new Apple Silicon SoCs from pre‑silicon bringup to mass production and beyond. You will write software to exercise and stress test various IP blocks and subsystems for Apple SoCs within a resource‑constrained environment.

Focus areas could include the DRAM interface, CPU cores and caches, digital media blocks, graphics and compute accelerators, or I/O interfaces such as USB, PCIe, or SPI. An ideal candidate will have experience with SoC bringup, validation, and reliability testing along with familiarity with at least one of these SoC functional blocks. Knowledge of SoC test strategies for DRAM or Burn‑in would be helpful.

You will also have the opportunity to collaborate cross‑functionally with all phases of operations teams from the wafer fab to the final test. You will have a direct impact on Apple’s future products by ensuring world‑class solutions to demanding test and engineering challenges.

• Participate in SoC bringup, validation, and test.
• Develop targeted SoC functional tests to screen for defects.
• Support test program deployment, failure analysis, and device characterization.
• Use a data‑driven, collaborative approach to effectively participate in multi‑team discussions and decision‑making.

• A bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, computer engineering, or related field with 3 years of experience.

• 2–3 years of embedded software development experience
• Expert embedded C programmer
• Experience debugging code on embedded devices
• Experience working with an RTOS based software environment
• Proven ability in problem solving and debugging complex issues
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to clearly articulate complex technical concepts and issues
• Exposure to SoC bringup and bare metal programming
• Experience with DRAM initialization, calibration, and test methodologies
• Experience with digital video processing (e.g., JPEG, MPEG, H.264)
• Experience with board level I/O (e.g., USB, I2C, SPI, MIPI, Display Port)
• Experience with RTOS internals, implementation and operation
• Exposure to modern processor designs including caches, virtual memory, and instruction pipelines
• Experience reading and writing ARM assembly language code
• Experience with multi‑core processors and thread synchronization
• Experience with computational accelerators such as vector or matrix math operations
• Experience using laboratory equipment such as logic analyzers and oscilloscopes
• Experience working with board schematics and debugging at the hardware level

At Apple, base pay is one part of our total compensation package and is determined within a range. The base pay range for this role is between $150,400 and $277,600, and your base pay will depend on your skills, qualifications, experience, and location.

Apple employees also have the opportunity to become an Apple shareholder through participation in Apple’s discretionary employee stock programs. They are eligible for discretionary restricted stock unit awards and can purchase Apple stock at a discount through the…