Sr Optical Transceiver Firmware Engineer

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Location: San Jose, California, United States

Supermicro® is a Top Tier provider of advanced server, storage, and networking solutions for Data Center, Cloud Computing, Enterprise IT, Hadoop/ Big Data, Hyperscale, HPC and IoT/Embedded customers worldwide. We are the #5 fastest growing company among the Silicon Valley Top 50 technology firms. Our unprecedented global expansion has provided us with the opportunity to offer a large number of new positions to the technology community.

We seek talented, passionate, and committed engineers, technologists, and business leaders to join us.

Supermicro is seeking a highly motivated and experienced Sr Optical Transceiver Firmware Engineer to develop embedded software and firmware for cutting-edge 800G, 1.6T, and future-generation optical transceiver modules. In this role, you will be responsible for designing and implementing the firmware infrastructure that enables module control, diagnostics, monitoring, configuration, and host communication for high-speed optical networking products used in AI, cloud, hyperscale, and data center environments.

You will collaborate closely with multidisciplinary teams across hardware, optics, systems, and manufacturing to develop next-generation optical transceiver solutions. This includes partnering with optical architects, electrical and signal integrity engineers, ASIC/FPGA teams, manufacturing engineers, validation engineers, and system software developers to define and implement module functionality that meets aggressive performance, power, reliability, and interoperability requirements.

• Design, develop, test, and debug embedded firmware for advanced optical transceiver platforms, including QSFP-DD, OSFP, OSFP-XD, and future high-speed module form factors.
• Implement and maintain firmware features supporting industry-standard management interfaces and protocols, including: CMIS, I²C, MDIO, SPI, and PMBus
• Develop firmware for:
  • Module initialization and control
  • Optical diagnostics and telemetry
  • Digital diagnostics monitoring (DDM)
  • Alarm and warning management
  • Thermal and power management
  • Fault detection and recovery
• Define firmware architecture, requirements, and design specifications in collaboration with optical, electrical, mechanical, and system engineering teams.
• Develop manufacturing and validation firmware features to support calibration, characterization, testing, and production qualification.
• Create and maintain automation tools, scripts, and test frameworks to improve validation efficiency and ensure standards compliance.
• Support interoperability testing with networking equipment from major switch, NIC, and system vendors.
• Work closely with manufacturing and operations teams to enable efficient production testing, firmware programming, field upgrades, and yield improvement initiatives.
• Analyze and optimize firmware performance, reliability, security, and power efficiency.
• Drive root-cause analysis and resolution of complex firmware, hardware, and system-level issues.
• Participate in design reviews, code reviews, technical discussions, and architecture planning activities.
• Stay current with industry standards and emerging technologies, including: CMIS, MSA specifications, IEEE Ethernet standards, Coherent and DSP-based optical technologies, and AI and hyperscale networking requirements
• Manufacturing Burn-In and Firmware QA

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical field.
• 8+ years of experience in embedded firmware or software development, preferably in networking, telecommunications, data center, or hardware-control applications.
• Strong proficiency in C/C++ programming for embedded systems.
• Experience developing firmware for hardware control and real-time embedded platforms.
• Hands-on experience with optical transceiver technologies, such as: QSFP
  28, QSFP-DD, OSFP, CFP/CFP2, and related pluggable optical modules
• Strong understanding of communication interfaces and protocols, including: I²C/I3C, MDIO, SPI, UART, PMBus
• Experience implementing or troubleshooting CMIS-compliant firmware.
• Knowledge of optical module diagnostics, telemetry, calibration, alarm handling, and health monitoring mechanisms.
• Strong debugging and problem-solving skills using laboratory equipment such as:
  Oscilloscopes, Logic analyzers, Protocol…