Embedded Software (FW) Engineer

About the company

Kandou AI is a fabless semiconductor design company that develops high-speed, energy-efficient connectivity and system solutions for datacenter infrastructure, AI and consumer electronics.

About this role

At Kandou, we are redefining the economics of AI infrastructure. Our mission is to democratise AI by significantly reducing the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of hardware systems — a critical barrier to scalable adoption. Our proprietary MIMO-over-copper technology powers a high-performance, chiplet-based AI memory fabric that is both scalable and energy-efficient. Unlike traditional interconnects, our solution reduces power consumption significantly while preserving high bandwidth and ultra-low latency — unlocking unprecedented efficiency for AI training and inference at scale. Kandou’s architecture is not just an incremental improvement — it’s a foundational shift in how AI hardware is built for the future. We are actively seeking for an Embedded Software (FW) Engineer Location: Reading (UK), Lausanne (CH) Responsibility - Develop, test and maintain Embedded Software for Kandou AI’s new ASIC products - Real-time Firmware design on high-speed heterogeneous SoC platform - Work with Architects and Lead engineers to design and implement according to system and module specifications - Software design and support for our silicon design infrastructure and workflow - Participate in and promote current best practices in test, review, integration, automation and delivery of quality software products Skills - Working with Heterogeneous multicore systems, including both scalar and vector processors - Real-world experience of high-speed signalling technologies: PCIe, CXL — particularly link training, equalization and retimer/redriver interaction with host and device PHYs - Firmware development for Active Electrical Cable (AEC) or retimer/redriver ASICs: cable diagnostics, eye margin monitoring, temperature/voltage telemetry and power-state management - Memory and network interfacing, virtual memory, simulation and co-simulation - Firmware Update approaches and algorithms - Use of simulation and/or FPGAs for pre-silicon development - Understanding of SerDes technology and PHY register-level tuning Experience - 7+ years' experience in designing, coding and debugging real-time applications in C and/or C++ in an embedded environment - Experience in porting and use of RTOS: Zephyr(preferred), FreeRTOS etc. - Knowledge of RISC-V CPU architecture; experience writing bare-metal or RTOS-based firmware targeting RISC-V cores (RV32/RV64) - Board and SoC bring-up with JTAG and other debug mechanisms - FW Update, bootloaders, secure boot - Debugging at application, driver and hardware levels - Interfacing to hardware and peripherals: UART, SPI, I2C/SMBus, I3C - Commitment to use of modern SW development and test workflow tools (CI / GitLab / Makefile / CMake / TDD etc.) - Knowledge of management and sideband protocols including SMBus, I3C, MCTP, CMIS