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Senior Firmware Architect

Santa Clara, CA

About Celestial AI

As Generative AI continues to advance, the performance drivers for data center infrastructure are shifting from systems-on-chip (SOCs) to systems of chips. In the era of Accelerated Computing, data center bottlenecks are no longer limited to compute performance, but rather the system’s interconnect bandwidth, memory bandwidth, and memory capacity. Celestial AI’s Photonic Fabric™ is the next-generation interconnect technology that delivers a tenfold increase in performance and energy efficiency compared to competing solutions.

The Photonic Fabric™ is available to our customers in multiple technology offerings, including optical interface chiplets, optical interposers, and Optical Multi-chip Interconnect Bridges (OMIB). This allows customers to easily incorporate high bandwidth, low power, and low latency optical interfaces into their AI accelerators and GPUs. The technology is fully compatible with both protocol and physical layers, including standard 2.5D packaging processes. This seamless integration enables XPUs to utilize optical interconnects for both compute-to-compute and compute-to-memory fabrics, achieving bandwidths in the tens of terabits per second with nanosecond latencies.

This innovation empowers hyperscalers to enhance the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of AI processing by optimizing the XPUs required for training and inference, while significantly reducing the TCO2 impact. To bolster customer collaborations, Celestial AI is developing a Photonic Fabric ecosystem consisting of tier-1 partnerships that include custom silicon/ASIC design, system integrators, HBM memory, assembly, and packaging suppliers.

ABOUT THE ROLE

As Senior Firmware Architect, you will be a key player in the architecture and the full lifecycle development of an AI platform system, including requirements, design, code, and test. In this role, you will be part of a team developing next generation AI/ML solutions using the Celestial AI Photonic Fabric Architecture. You will be responsible for defining the firmware architecture for Celestial AI’s photonic fabric product lineup and defining and developing APIs for resource management and optimization. You will collaborate closely with hardware and software teams to architect and implement the communication link management software for different Photonic Fabric use cases.  

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

  • Participate in gathering technical requirements, contributing to firmware and software design specifications
  • Design firmware architecture, define key capabilities, performance requirements and drive specifications
  • Provide support to both internal and external SW and HW development teams
  • Actively engage in code reviews, discussions to share knowledge, and improve code quality
  • Work with hardware designers to ensure firmware architecture can be efficiently implemented
  • Demonstrate best practices in software development and documentation to ensure designs meet requirements
  • Provide guidance on test plans for lab characterization once design comes back from fab
  • Deliver high-quality software on tight schedules.

QUALIFICATIONS

  • Bachelor’s degree with 10+ years of experience, or Master’s degree with 8+ years of experience in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Information Technology or a related technical field
  • Prior experience in creating the software architecture for a complex system such as a high performance storage/memory appliances, network switch/router, communications processor etc
  • Strong software systems knowledge spanning firmware, performance characterization, software updates and deployment, event logging, management and orchestration
  • Strong C/C++, Python and Rust programming skills with software design skills, including debugging, performance analysis, and testing
  • Experience with:
    • High-speed communication technologies such as Infiniband, Fibre Channel, Ethernet, RDMA and PCIe.
    • High-speed communication link training, calibration and link bringup
    • Memory controllers such as HBM, DDR, and other on-chip memory interfaces
    • SoC interfaces including AXI and other chip-to-chip interfaces
  • Familiarity with:
    • Baseboard management controller (BMC) software
    • Open-source software - use of GitHub, bug tracking, branching and merging code
    • Linux, Embedded Linux or RTOS
    • Low level protocols such as SPI, I2C, UART, JTAG
    • ARM/x86 architecture
  • Strong analytical, debugging, and testing methodology skills with ability to efficiently debug, root cause, and resolve issues spanning multiple subsystems
  • Ability to work in a fast-paced, agile team environment

LOCATION: Santa Clara, CA

For California Location:

As an early stage start up, we offer an extremely attractive total compensation package inclusive of competitive base salary, bonus and a generous grant of our valuable early-stage equity. The target base salary for this role is approximately $210,000.00 - $240,000.00. The base salary offered may be slightly higher or lower than the target base salary, based on the final scope as determined by the depth of the experience and skills demonstrated by candidate in the interviews. 

We offer great benefits (health, vision, dental and life insurance), collaborative and continuous learning work environment, where you will get a chance to work with smart and dedicated people engaged in developing the next generation architecture for high performance computing.

Celestial AI Inc. is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer.

 

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