Roles / Hardware-Software Integration Debug Engineer

Hardware-Software Integration Debug Engineer

PSI-005v1

Silicon Bring-up, Validation & ReliabilitySoftwareIC3–IC7Individual contributor

Also known as: HW/SW Co-Debug Engineer; Platform Integration Engineer; System Integration Debug Engineer

See this role on the FPGA lifecycle or on the AI accelerator lifecycle or on the Firmware and software lifecycle or on the System lifecycle or on the SoC lifecycle

Summary

Resolves defects that live on the boundary between silicon and software, where neither the hardware team nor the software team can see the whole picture alone.

A day in the life

Work in progressNo day-in-the-life description has been written for this role yet. If you do this work, we would welcome yours. Suggest a source or a correction

Responsibilities

Project

Work done for a product or program.

Debug boot, driver, kernel and hypervisor failures on new silicon using combined hardware trace and software instrumentation.
Correlate CoreSight/ETM instruction trace, bus trace and logic analyzer captures against kernel logs and driver state to localise faults.
Reproduce intermittent system hangs, deadlocks and data corruption and reduce them to a minimal deterministic test case.
Arbitrate ownership disputes between hardware and software teams by producing evidence that isolates the defect to one side.
Bring up device drivers, BSPs and firmware on new silicon and validate register programming sequences against the specification.
Analyse cache coherency, memory ordering and interconnect arbitration issues using bus monitors and performance counters.
Develop diagnostic tooling such as crash dump analysers, register dumpers and trace decoders for the platform.
Document root causes, workarounds and software patch requirements for the errata and release notes.

Function

Work that keeps the discipline running: methods, tools, suppliers and people.

Validate power management state transitions between software policy and hardware behaviour across suspend, resume and DVFS.

Major tasks

Project

Produce and hand over the role's key deliverables
- Root-cause reports separating silicon defects from software defects
- Minimal reproducers for intermittent system-level failures
- Trace-based debug tooling and decoders
- Software workaround specifications for silicon errata
- Platform integration debug playbooks
Develop the softwareGeneral
- Design to the hardware specification
- Write and review the code
- Test on models, emulation or silicon
Release and supportGeneral
- Package and document releases
- Fix customer-reported defects

Function

Maintain the platformGeneral
- Keep build, test and release tools working
- Track toolchain and operating system changes
Raise qualityGeneral
- Run code reviews
- Extend automated tests

Works with

Firmware and BSP teams
OS and driver engineers
SoC design leads
DFD and debug architecture
validation
customer support engineering

Typical backgrounds

BS/MS in Computer Engineering or Computer Science; 5–15 years spanning embedded software, kernel/driver development and silicon validation.

Demand signal

0 open listings right now
0 Talent Wafer employer inquiries

Counts live listings tagged to this role, and employer interest in candidates from Talent Wafer runs for this role (all runs to date). Hub activity only, not the wider market.

Comp tier (within semis)

4 / 5

Remote feasibility

Medium

Semis core vs. portable

Semis-primary, transfers

Geographic hotspots

Austin, Santa Clara, Cambridge UK, Bangalore, Haifa, Munich, Shanghai, Taipei, Warsaw

Certifications / standards training

—

Transfers to (industries)

Automotive software platforms, networking and telecom systems, cloud infrastructure hardware teams, consumer device OEMs, robotics platforms

Risk if vacant

Cross-domain bugs bounce indefinitely between hardware and software teams, silicon is blamed for software defects and vice versa, and platform enablement slips by months.

Hardware-Software Integration Debug Engineer

Summary

A day in the life

Responsibilities

Project

Function

Major tasks

Project

Function

Works with

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