Senior Principal / Principal Embedded Software Engineer

Summary

As Senior Principal Embedded Software Engineer, you'll provide strategic technical leadership, define and oversee embedded software architecture, and set high standards for software engineering excellence across EnSilica’s diverse projects. You'll collaborate closely with senior management, internal stakeholders (ASIC, hardware, systems, QA), and customers to ensure technical solutions align closely with business objectives, and actively shape project direction, execution, and strategic outcomes.

Your Key Responsibilities

• Strategic Technical Leadership: Define and lead embedded software architectures and complex development activities for advanced embedded systems on ARM, RISC-V, and FPGA/ASIC platforms.


• Stakeholder Collaboration: Partner closely with senior leadership, project management, customers, and cross-functional teams to ensure software strategies meet overall product and company goals.


• Mentorship and Team Development: Provide technical guidance, mentorship, and professional growth for software engineering teams, ensuring continuous improvement in software quality and best practices.


• Requirement & Project Leadership: Drive requirements capture, analysis, and refinement; actively contribute to project management, estimation, scheduling, risk assessment, and resource allocation.


• Quality and Compliance Oversight: Champion adherence to industry standards, quality assurance processes (ISO9001), and continuous improvement initiatives within the software lifecycle.


• Technical Representation: Act as the software lead in customer interactions, technical reviews, and pre-sales activities (RFQs, proposals), effectively communicating complex technical solutions clearly to diverse stakeholders.

Key Skills and Experience

Essential

• Proven track record (15+ years industry experience, 7+ years technical leadership) of delivering complex embedded software solutions at system and architectural level.


• Expert-level embedded C/C++ programming on ARM and/or RISC-V architectures, including advanced debugging (trace/debug, MPSoC bring-up, system validation).


• Demonstrated ability in software/hardware co-design, silicon validation, and deep technical problem-solving in real-time embedded systems (bare-metal, RTOS, Linux).


• Extensive experience with modern embedded software toolchains, build systems (CMake, GNU Make, SCons), and version control (Git, SVN).


• Strong familiarity with digital signal processing, wireless protocol stacks, and embedded communication protocols.

Desirable

• Expertise with requirements and project management tools (Polarion, Jira, Microsoft Project).


• Proficiency in Python, MATLAB, or GNU Octave for system modelling, prototyping, and validation.


• Knowledge of automotive functional safety standards and secure architectures (ISO 26262, ASIL levels, Arm TrustZone, PSA certification).


• Familiarity with advanced communications algorithms (beamforming, DPD), and industry standards (3GPP, DVB-S).


• Experience with formal software methodologies (IEC 61508, DO-178C).


• Understanding of ASIC/FPGA design flows, SystemVerilog, and related EDA tools (Xilinx, Cadence).

Personal Skills

• Visionary technical leader with a strategic mindset capable of aligning technical solutions to business objectives.


• Exceptional communicator, adept at managing relationships and clearly articulating complex technical concepts to stakeholders and senior management.


• Strong mentor, fostering a culture of excellence, ownership, and continuous improvement.


• Highly adaptable, proactive, and decisive, thriving in dynamic, multi-disciplinary environments.

Position Specifics

This role is hybrid at our Milton Park office (our guideline is for 3 days in the office) or Remote.

Some occasional travel may be required to another UK site.

Applicants must have the right to live and work in UK.