Graduate Firmware Engineer

This is a Graduate Firmware Engineer role focused on embedded systems and hardware-level software, where you develop and maintain the low-level firmware that boots and controls Graphcore’s AI hardware and silicon.

About us 

Graphcore is one of the world’s leading innovators in Artificial Intelligence compute. It is developing hardware, software and systems infrastructure that will unlock the next generation of AI breakthroughs and power the widespread adoption of AI solutions across every industry. 

As part of the SoftBank Group, Graphcore is a member of an elite family of companies responsible for some of the world’s most transformative technologies. Together, they share a bold vision: to enable Artificial Super Intelligence and ensure its benefits are accessible to everyone. 

Graphcore’s teams are drawn from diverse backgrounds and bring a broad range of skills and perspectives. A melting pot of AI research specialists, silicon designers, software engineers and systems architects, Graphcore enjoys a culture of continuous learning and constant innovation. 

Job Summary

Reporting to the Firmware Manager, the Graduate Firmware Engineer will contribute to the design, development and delivery of the firmware that powers our next generation products. They are expected to take part in technical discussions across multiple teams within Graphcore and our partners.

The Team

The firmware team writes the software that ensures the full and complete bootup of Graphcore Hardware and Silicon. We design and maintain interfaces to allow our Drivers software to interact with Graphcore Silicon. We present telemetry and monitoring data for use by the host system via the SMBus interface, and by data centre operatives via the BMC.

Responsibilities and Duties

• Support the design, development and delivery of firmware code to the expected Graphcore standards

• Participate in technical design discussions within the Firmware team, other teams within Graphcore and our partners

• Participate in code reviews individually and as part of the team

• Participate in Agile ceremonies and actively improve Agile best practices within the team

• Contribute to and take part in in-depth technical design discussions with team members, bringing new ideas and innovative techniques to the team where possible

• Support engineers within the team and other teams to investigate and resolve firmware-related problems with our products

Candidate Profile

Essential:

• Bachelor's or Master’s Degree in Computer Science, Maths, Machine Learning, Data Science, or related field

• Understanding of Continuous Integration, build systems and software packaging best practices

• Introductory experience with C or Python

Desirable

• Experience of designing and implementing real-time embedded software, and subsequent verification

• Proven ability to understand, build and debug complex embedded platforms

• A good understanding of server architecture and performance in a datacentre environment

• Experience of device drivers and OS Kernel development

• A good understanding of server security from both a hardware and software perspective, and how this applies to the server firmware

Benefits

In addition to a competitive salary, Graphcore offers flexible working, a generous annual leave policy, private medical insurance and health cash plan, a dental plan, pension (matched up to 5%), life assurance and income protection. We have a generous parental leave policy and an employee assistance programme (which includes health, mental wellbeing, and bereavement support).

We offer a range of healthy food and snacks at our central Bristol office and have our own barista bar! We welcome people of different backgrounds and experiences; we’re committed to building an inclusive work environment that makes Graphcore a great home for everyone.

We offer an equal opportunity process and understand that there are visible and invisible differences in all of us. We can provide a flexible approach to interview and encourage you to chat to us if you require any reasonable adjustments.