Staff System Software Engineer

About SiFive

As the pioneers who introduced RISC-V to the world, SiFive is transforming the future of compute by bringing the limitless potential of RISC-V to the highest performance and most data-intensive applications in the world. SiFive’s unrivaled compute platforms are continuing to enable leading technology companies around the world to innovate, optimize and deliver the most advanced solutions of tomorrow across every market segment of chip design, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, automotive, data center, mobile, and consumer. With SiFive, the future of RISC-V has no limits.

At SiFive, we are always excited to connect with talented individuals, who are just as passionate about driving innovation and changing the world as we are.  

Our constant innovation and ongoing success is down to our amazing teams of incredibly talented people, who collaborate and support each other to come up with truly groundbreaking ideas and solutions.  Solutions that will have a huge impact on people's lives; making the world a better place, one processor at a time. 

Are you ready?  

To learn more about SiFive’s phenomenal success and to see why we have won the GSA’s prestigious Most Respected Private Company Award (for the fourth time!), check out our website and Glassdoor pages.

Job Description:

The Role
We at SiFive are proud to take a software first approach to develop tools and frameworks that achieve cutting edge performance without compromising quality for the SiFive processor family. SiFive designs Core IPs that deliver performance, are optimized for power and area, but do not sacrifice flexibility or programmability. Our software stack is codesigned with the hardware and developed with scalability and quality in mind. Join us to develop revolutionary software from the ground up!

SiFive is seeking an experienced System Software Engineer for our System Software group. The SiFive System Software group develops critical software components for our processors, from firmware and bare-metal to high-level OS. The team is global, spanning several worldwide sites, working together as one group. We believe that engineers create most of the value in the company. Our management chain has a strong engineering and software development background. We believe in open, honest, and direct communication; mutual respect; and seek strong communicators and listeners.

As a System Software Engineer, you will work with system architecture, hardware engineering and software engineering teams to help design and evaluate systems, including CPUs, interconnects, firewalls, and related IP blocks. You’ll work with our software group to design software implementations that take advantage of hardware features and integrate cleanly with existing operating systems, such as Linux. You’ll write software for Linux kernel, device drivers, OpenSBI, u-boot, Yocto/OpenEmbedded. You’ll be a part of creating something big, all based around the RISC-V instruction set architecture.
Responsibilities

• Design, develop, upstream and release system software: Linux kernel, device drivers, OpenSBI, u-boot, Yocto/OpenEmbedded (both SiFive-proprietary and public open source)
• Engage with architecture, hardware engineering, and other software engineering teams to review, and refine features

Requirements

• This position involves development of software for interfaces like PCIe, Ethernet, and CXL. Expert knowledge of these is required
• Experience with ACPI, UEFI, edk2, OpenBMC and data center platforms is highly desired
• 5+ years of experience developing architecture-level code or device drivers in C for multiprocessor, multithreaded open source kernels such as Linux or BSD, with upstream involvement
• Proven experience with upstream development on high-level operating systems such as Linux
• Strong communication, co-working, and listening skills
• Experience working with hardware architecture and engineering teams
• Experience debugging complex multicore systems
• Experience debugging with GDB, JTAG and OpenOCD
• Experience with git, Makefile, GNU toolchain and shell scripting
• Experience with device drivers, virtualization and IOMMUs
• B.Sc., or M.Sc. in Computer Science, or related discipline, or equivalent experience

Additional Information:

This position requires a successful background and reference checks and satisfactory proof of your right to work in:

Any offer of employment for this position is also contingent on the Company verifying that you are a authorized for access to export-controlled technology under applicable export control laws or, if you are not already authorized, our ability to successfully obtain any necessary export license(s) or other approvals.

SiFive is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.