Accelerator Driver​/Firmware Interface Lead

About Velaura

Velaura is building the next generation of compute platforms for Physical AI.

As AI moves beyond the datacenter into robots, autonomous mobile systems, drones, and other embodied systems, traditional compute architectures are increasingly constrained by power, memory bandwidth, latency, real‑time requirements, and functional safety considerations.

Our mission is to develop the foundational compute technologies that enable intelligent systems to operate efficiently in the physical world.

We are assembling a team of exceptional architects and engineers to rethink how AI, sensing, memory, and control interact within a modern computing platform.

We are looking for an Accelerator Driver / Firmware Interface Lead to own the low‑level software boundary between Velaura’s AI accelerator hardware, firmware, Linux kernel driver, and user‑space runtime.

This role will lead development of the NPU kernel driver, firmware ABI, command submission model, interrupts, scheduling primitives, firmware loading, reset/recovery, telemetry, debug interfaces, and low‑level validation. The ideal candidate has deep experience with Linux device drivers, accelerator firmware interfaces, DMA/IOMMU, and complex hardware/software bring‑up.

• Lead architecture and development of the NPU kernel driver and firmware interface.
• Own command submission, queues, interrupts, synchronization, memory mapping, scheduling primitives, firmware loading, telemetry, and error handling.
• Define the firmware ABI and versioning strategy between NPU firmware, kernel driver, runtime, compiler‑generated artifacts, and diagnostic tools.
• Work with hardware and firmware teams on registers, command streams, error states, reset behavior, performance counters, debug hooks, and silicon errata.
• Partner with Kernel Memory/DMA/IOMMU and Runtime teams on buffer sharing, dma‑buf, IOMMU mappings, cache coherency, and zero‑copy execution.
• Define reset/recovery, hang detection, multi‑process/multi‑context behavior, device isolation, and robustness requirements.
• Support pre‑silicon driver development using simulation, emulation, FPGA, or virtual‑platform environments.
• Establish driver validation, firmware ABI tests, stress tests, fault‑injection tests, and first‑silicon bring‑up diagnostics.
• Evaluate upstream Linux accelerator‑driver strategy where appropriate.
• Hire, mentor, and lead engineers focused on NPU driver, firmware interface, and low‑level accelerator software.

• Deep Linux kernel driver development experience for complex devices such as GPUs, NPUs, DSPs, networking ASICs, storage, cameras, or other accelerators.
• Strong understanding of DMA, IOMMU/SMMU, interrupts, MMIO, command queues, firmware loading, synchronization, and hardware error handling.
• Strong C programming skills and ability to debug hardware/software interactions at the register, firmware, kernel, and user‑space levels.
• Experience defining or maintaining firmware ABIs, driver interfaces, ioctl or sysfs/debugfs interfaces, telemetry, and diagnostic hooks.
• Experience with lab bring‑up, pre‑silicon environments, first silicon, or hardware validation workflows.
• Ability to work across hardware architecture, firmware, runtime, compiler, Platform SW, SQA, and performance teams.
• Strong debugging skills using UART, JTAG, kernel tracing, firmware logs, hardware counters, or equivalent tools.

• Experience with AI accelerators, GPU drivers, DRM/accel subsystem, DSP drivers, or heterogeneous compute platforms.
• Experience with dma‑buf, dma‑fence, DRM, IOMMU, virtualization, multi‑process scheduling, or device isolation.
• Experience with firmware crash capture, device reset/recovery, hang detection, and fault injection.
• Experience up streaming Linux drivers or designing upstream‑quality kernel interfaces.
• Familiarity with AI inference runtimes, compiler artifacts, tensor memory layouts, or model execution pipelines.
• Experience with safety, security, or reliability requirements for embedded, automotive, robotics, or industrial systems.

At Velaura, we believe exceptional talent deserves exceptional rewards. Compensation for…