Staff Engineer - Embedded Software, Imaging

Company Overview Ambiq is on a mission to enable intelligence everywhere — powering the AI edge revolution with the world's lowest-power semiconductor solutions. Built on our proprietary sub- and near-threshold technology, our chips deliver multi-fold improvements in energy efficiency without costly process scaling. Since 2010, we've shipped over 300 million units to customers building smarter wearables, medical devices, IoT products, and AI-powered edge applications. Our cross-functional teams span design, research, development, production, marketing, sales, and operations across Austin, Hsinchu, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Singapore. We move fast, tackle hard problems, and create space for people to grow through complex, meaningful work that shapes the future of technology. We're looking for self-motivated, creative problem-solvers who are eager to push technological limits and make a real impact in energy efficiency. At Ambiq, we live by five values: Innovate. Collaborate. Focus. Learn. Achieve. If that's you, join us — the intelligence everywhere revolution starts here. Scope As a Staff Embedded Software Engineer, Imaging at Ambiq, you will lead the architecture, development, integration, and validation of the imaging subsystem software for Ambiq SoCs. You will be responsible for evaluating, porting, and optimizing firmware and device drivers for image processing, video, and camera interfaces within the AmbiqSuite SDK across silicon and emulation platforms. You will also evaluate and integrate customer-facing tools for image sensor bring-up, calibration, and characterization, enabling customers to successfully deploy camera-based solutions on Ambiq devices. Working within Ambiq's global MCU software organization, you will collaborate closely with the SoC architecture, silicon design, and verification engineering teams throughout the product lifecycle—from pre-silicon FPGA validation through post-silicon bring-up, optimization, and customer enablement. The ideal candidate is a seasoned hands-on technical contributor who learns quickly, thrives in a lab environment, enjoys solving challenging hardware/software integration problems, and continuously seeks to improve both products and engineering processes. Responsibilities Lead the design, implementation, and maintenance of the embedded imaging subsystem software for ARM Cortex-M–based platforms. Evaluate, port, optimize, or develop firmware and device drivers for image processing, video, and camera interface hardware. Design and implement firmware interfaces for image acquisition, processing, and streaming on resource-constrained embedded systems. Integrate camera sensors using MIPI CSI-2 interfaces and support end-to-end camera bring-up, validation, and performance optimization. Enable image sensor integration by evaluating and supporting calibration, characterization, and image quality tuning tools. Lead imaging subsystem software activities during pre-silicon FPGA verification and post-silicon bring-up, validation, debugging, and performance tuning. Optimize imaging and video processing pipelines for real-time performance, memory utilization, and power efficiency. Support design verification, field applications engineers, and strategic customers during product development and deployment. Provide technical subject-matter expertise on imaging subsystem software architecture and implementation. Qualifications M.S. in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field with 6+ years of embedded software experience, or B.S. with 8+ years of experience. At least 3 years of experience developing embedded imaging, camera, video, or related multimedia software. Strong experience developing low-level firmware, HAL, and device drivers for ARM-based embedded systems. Strong understanding of camera imaging pipelines, including MIPI CSI-2 and I3C/I2C control interfaces to embedded ISPs, as well as raw Bayer and common pixel formats (e.g., YUV420 and RGB). This must include an understanding of 3A processing and frame-timing control for camera sensors. Experience with embedded video pipelines including video streaming and hardware-accelerated image/video codecs such as JPEG, H.264, and H.265. Experience developing software using FreeRTOS, Zephyr RTOS, or similar real-time operating systems. Familiarity with image sensor calibration, characterization, and image quality tuning workflows. Expert proficiency in C with strong embedded software architect…