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Senior Platform Firmware Engineer

Cowboy Space Corporation· Chief Engineering & Reliability
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San Carlos, California$170k - $235kFull-timePosted 2mo ago

About the role

Senior Platform Firmware Engineer role at Cowboy Space Corp, bridging hardware and software across platform firmware, FPGA logic, board bring-up, system management, and autonomous recovery for reliable operation from power-on to orbital deployment.

Responsibilities

  • Develop and maintain platform firmware and board management infrastructure for advanced compute systems.
  • Own system bring-up and low-level boot sequencing for custom hardware platforms.
  • Design and implement FPGA/CPLD logic for power sequencing, reset orchestration, watchdog functionality, and telemetry.
  • Develop and customize BMC firmware and management stacks using OpenBMC and related technologies.
  • Implement and maintain platform management interfaces including Redfish and/or IPMI.
  • Debug complex hardware/firmware interactions across CPUs, GPUs, PCIe fabrics, and networking devices.
  • Collaborate closely with hardware, validation, thermal, and systems teams during bring-up and deployment.
  • Develop fault recovery and autonomous reboot for remote orbital systems.
  • Support secure boot, firmware update, and system attestation architectures.

Qualifications

  • Hands-on experience in embedded systems, platform firmware, BMC development, or hardware bring-up engineering.
  • Strong proficiency in C/C++ and Python.
  • Deep understanding of platform initialization and boot architectures.
  • Strong familiarity with hardware communication interfaces including I2C, SPI, UART, GPIO, and JTAG.
  • Experience debugging hardware/software interactions at board and system level.
  • Familiarity with FPGA or CPLD development workflows using Xilinx or Altera platforms.
  • Strong systems-level debugging and problem-solving skills.

Skills

Required:Platform firmware developmentC/C++PythonBoot architecturesInterfaces (I2C, SPI, UART, GPIO, JTAG)FPGA/CPLDDebugging hardware/software interactions

Benefits

  • Equity in Cowboy Space Corp.
  • Medical, dental, and vision insurance for employees and eligible dependents
  • 401(k) retirement savings plan
  • Paid time off
  • 10 paid holidays per calendar year
  • Paid parental leave
  • Relocation assistance if applicable
  • Daily lunch in the office and a fully stocked kitchen with beverages and snacks
Last updated Sep 20, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

About Cowboy Space Corporation

Powering Humanity From the High Frontier

Cowboy Space Corp. is building a power grid in outer space for artificial intelligence. It is an integrated system of satellites and rockets to haul high-performance compute and optical data transmission down from Low Earth Orbit. Earth's energy grid can't run at the pace of AI. We can.

Orbital Data CentersAI compute in spacesolar-powered data centersLow Earth Orbitpower grid in space
Company profileWebsite

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