How To Become A Senior Firmware Engineer: What It Is and Career Path

What is a senior firmware engineer and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

4 min read

Senior firmware engineers are in charge of writing, developing, and testing firmware. The firmware is the software component of every form of a computer system that contains its algorithms or code of instructions. A senior firmware engineer will spend most of his/her time writing firmware for new devices, testing new firmware, and debugging or troubleshooting where necessary.

You are expected to evaluate your company's firmware needs, design firmware to suit their needs within their budget, implement the software, test run and debug to ensure that the software runs properly. You might be required to test various other software programs and improve their functionality. Also, keep in mind that as a senior engineer, you run a team, and as such, you must provide the right training and working atmosphere.

You will need extensive knowledge of programming languages like C, C++, PCI, and Linux. The minimum educational qualification for this role is a bachelor's degree in computer science or a related field. Employers look out for applicants with analytical skills, team leadership skills, and excellent communication skills for the sake of your team and the customers. Your mean annual salary is about $115,000.

ScoreSenior Firmware EngineerUS Average

Salary

8.2

Avg. Salary $123,759

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

4.7

Growth rate 21%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

4.0

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.17%

Asian 30.92%

Black or African American 4.49%

Hispanic or Latino 8.23%

Unknown 4.81%

White 51.38%

Gender

female 9.96%

male 90.04%

Age - 38

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 38

Stress level

4.7

Stress level is manageable

7.1 - high

Complexity level

6.8

Complexity level is challenging

7 - challenging

Work life balance

6.2

Work life balance is fair

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a senior firmware engineer

Explore senior firmware engineer education requirements

Most common senior firmware engineer degrees

Bachelor's

70.5 %

Master's

25.1 %

Associate

2.0 %

Start to develop specific senior firmware engineer skills

Skills	Percentages
Python	6.20%
SPI	4.94%
Embedded Systems	4.88%
Linux	4.67%
C	4.60%

Complete relevant senior firmware engineer training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 1-3 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New senior firmware engineers learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a senior firmware engineer based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real senior firmware engineer resumes.

Research senior firmware engineer duties and responsibilities

Lead a group of 9 engineers responsible for technology development for handling electronic packages (computer CPU) during HVM.
Optimize eAAC+ encoder, eAAC+ decoder and bluetooth SBC encoder.
Port Bluetooth stack to implement application protocol through SPP RECOMM interface.
Mentore team members who are unfamiliar with Java and object orient programming.

Get senior firmware engineer experience

Generally, it takes 1-2 years to become a senior firmware engineer. The most common roles before becoming a senior firmware engineer include senior software engineer, software engineer team lead and firmware engineer.

Prepare your senior firmware engineer resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your senior firmware engineer resume.

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