Principal Systems Software Engineer

Firmware connects hardware capability to cloud reliability. At OCI, you will work where those layers meet-investigating challenging failures, developing lasting fixes, and improving how firmware is tested, deployed, and operated across our infrastructure.

As a Principal Systems Firmware Engineer, you will design, develop, and improve BMC firmware or BIOS/UEFI and the tools that support its deployment across OCI’s server and GPU infrastructure. You will own complex engineering problems across firmware, hardware, and operating systems, delivering changes that improve platform reliability, diagnosability, security, and recovery.

Your initial focus will be engineering improvements for platforms already operating in our fleet. You will use production findings to identify design weaknesses, develop and validate firmware fixes, extend automated testing, and eliminate recurring failure modes. Success means delivering durable improvements that reduce failures and the need for manual intervention.

You will also participate in an India daytime on-call rotation, complementing US engineering teams. This responsibility connects your engineering work directly to how platforms behave in production and includes incident investigation, mitigation, and coordinated handoffs.

As the team grows, its scope is expected to expand into new server and GPU platform development, with opportunities to work alongside silicon suppliers and ODM/JDM partners on firmware integration, platform bring-up, and validation.

This role offers the opportunity to help shape a new team’s engineering practices while remaining deeply involved in design, code, and complex technical investigations.

Key Responsibilities

• Own firmware development and integration. Design, develop, debug, and maintain BMC or BIOS/UEFI components and supporting systems software. Define clear interfaces across firmware, hardware, operating systems, and fleet management services.

• Resolve complex fleet issues. Lead investigations into boot failures, management controller faults, firmware update problems, hardware initialization failures, and other platform reliability issues. Develop mitigations, establish root cause, and deliver durable fixes.
• Provide operational support. Participate in the India daytime on-call rotation, coordinate investigations and handoffs with US teams, and communicate impact, progress, and resolution clearly.
• Build automation and preventive controls. Develop tools for firmware provisioning, updates, diagnostics, recovery, and validation. Improve telemetry, logging, and failure analysis to reduce recurring incidents and manual intervention.
• Drive software quality and security. Write maintainable code, lead design and code reviews, and develop functional, regression, negative, and recovery tests. Apply secure development practices and support firmware vulnerability remediation.
• Contribute to platform bring-up. Diagnose interactions across firmware, hardware, bootloaders, and operating systems. Use platform logs and appropriate hardware debugging tools to isolate faults and validate end-to-end behavior.
• Collaborate with engineering and vendor partners. Work with hardware, silicon, operating system, validation, and fleet operations teams. As product development scope grows, work with ODM/JDM partners on requirements, defect resolution, firmware releases, and platform readiness.
• Provide technical leadership. Own delivery of complex engineering work, identify dependencies and risks, document designs and debugging methods, mentor engineers, and contribute to hiring and continuous improvement.

Required qualifications

• Meet one of the following education and software development experience combinations:
  • 11 years of software development experience; or
  • A bachelor’s degree/B.Tech in a relevant engineering, computing, information technology, mathematics, physics, or related field, with 7 years of software development experience; or
  • A master’s degree/M.Tech in one of these fields, with 5 years of software development experience; or
  • A doctorate in one of these fields, with 3 years of software development experience.
• At least 6 years of experience using programming and scripting languages, with strong C/C++ skills and the ability to build diagnostic and automation tools.
• Substantial hands-on development and debugging experience in BMC firmware or BIOS/UEFI, with the ability to investigate interactions across the broader server platform.
• Strong understanding of server architecture, embedded systems, hardware/software interfaces, and Linux fundamentals.
• Demonstrated ability to diagnose complex issues across firmware, hardware, and operating systems, using evidence to distinguish symptoms from root causes.
• Experience owning software components through design, implementation, code review, testing, release, and ongoing support.
• Experience developing automated tests, diagnostics, or operational tooling and improving reliability, observability, or performance.
• Ability to lead technical investigations, mentor colleagues, and communicate effectively across engineering teams and external partners.
• Willingness to participate in the India daytime on-call rotation.

Preferred qualifications

• Experience with OpenBMC or other server BMC stacks, or with server BIOS/UEFI implementations such as EDK II or commercial firmware platforms.
• Familiarity with relevant platform interfaces and protocols, such as Redfish, IPMI, PLDM/MCTP, SMBus/I²C, SPI, PCIe, or ACPI.
• Experience with server or GPU platform bring-up, hardware initialization, power and thermal management, or reliability, availability, and serviceability (RAS) features.
• Experience using JTAG, logic analyzers, protocol analyzers, or emulators, and interpreting schematics and board documentation.
• Experience with secure boot, firmware signing, update and recovery mechanisms, or firmware security remediation.
• Experience supporting production infrastructure at cloud or hyperscale environments, including controlled firmware rollouts and incident response.
• Experience collaborating with silicon suppliers, BIOS/BMC vendors, or ODM/JDM engineering teams.