Firmware Test Automation Engineer

Introduction

As a Hardware Developer at IBM, you'll get to work on the systems that are driving the quantum revolution and the AI era. Join an elite team of engineering professionals who enable IBM customers to make better decisions quicker on the most trusted hardware platform in today's market.

Your role and responsibilities

Team Overview:

Join IBM's elite product development division, contributing to innovations across IBM Z, POWER Systems, Storage, Quantum, and Research. You'll be part of the embedded FCU Firmware Team, which powers the reliability and performance of IBM Z Mainframes. The FCU (FRU Control Unit) is a microcontroller embedded on adapter cards, managing initialization, firmware updates, telemetry, power sequencing, and environmental monitoring. It interfaces with the BMC drawer controller via I2C and plays a vital role in system health.

Role Summary:

As a Firmware Test Automation Engineer, your focus will be on designing and implementing automated testing frameworks to validate FCU firmware quality. You won't be developing new firmware but rather ensuring its robustness through rigorous testing and analysis.

Key Responsibilities:

• Unit Test Automation: Develop scalable unit tests for FCU firmware (C/C++).
• Build System Transition: Migrate firmware build flow from IAR to GCC and maintain automated builds.
• Test Case Development: Automate tests for diverse hardware and system scenarios.
• Regression Testing: Collaborate with US-based teams to run and analyze tests on real hardware.
• Simulation & Debugging: Use Simics to reproduce issues and automate simulation workflows.
• Hardware Variance Testing: Create frameworks to stress firmware across hardware variance using Simics.
• Visualization & Reporting: Build dashboards/GUI for test coverage, defect tracking, and failure statistics.
• Defect Analysis: Diagnose and classify bugs, providing actionable insights to developers.
• Tool Development: Build Python tools to enhance diagnostics, documentation, and team productivity.

Required education

Bachelor's Degree

Preferred education

Bachelor's Degree

Required technical and professional expertise

• BE/B.Tech/M.Tech in Computer Science Engineering.
• 5+ years of experience in C/C++, Python, and Bash.
• Strong understanding of server architecture and embedded hardware.
• Experience with testing frameworks, data visualization, simulation and debugging.
• Excellent communication, problem-solving, and time management skills.
• Ability to work independently and in cross-functional teams.

Preferred technical and professional experience

Minimum 3+ years of experience in below skills.

• Programming/Scripting: Proficiency in C/C++, Python, and Bash.
• Build & Toolchains: Experience with gcc, makefiles, and code migration/refactoring.
• Testing Frameworks: Familiarity with Robot Framework, PyTest, or similar.
• Data Visualization: Ability to create dashboards using Matplotlib, Plotly, Grafana, or Power BI.
• Simulation: Exposure to Simics models or similar environments.
• Debugging: Skilled with gdb and regex for log parsing and analysis.
• Hardware Knowledge: Understanding of I2C, power sequencing, and temperature/voltage monitoring in embedded systems.

ABOUT BUSINESS UNIT

IBM Systems helps IT leaders think differently about their infrastructure. IBM servers and storage are no longer inanimate - they can understand, reason, and learn so our clients can innovate while avoiding IT issues. Our systems power the world's most important industries and our clients are the architects of the future. Join us to help build our leading-edge technology portfolio designed for cognitive business and optimized for cloud computing.

YOUR LIFE @ IBM

In a world where technology never stands still, we understand that, dedication to our clients success, innovation that matters, and trust and personal responsibility in all our relationships, lives in what we do as IBMers as we strive to be the catalyst that makes the world work better.

Being an IBMer means you'll be able to learn and develop yourself and your career, you'll be encouraged to be courageous and experiment everyday, all whilst having continuous trust and support in an environment where everyone can thrive whatever their personal or professional background.

Our IBMers are growth minded, always staying curious, open to feedback and learning new information and skills to constantly transform themselves and our company. They are trusted to provide on-going feedback to help other IBMers grow, as well as collaborate with colleagues keeping in mind a team focused approach to include different perspectives to drive exceptional outcomes for our customers. The courage our IBMers have to make critical decisions everyday is essential to IBM becoming the catalyst for progress, always embracing challenges with resources they have to hand, a can-do attitude and always striving for an outcome focused approach within everything that they do.

Are you ready to be an IBMer?

ABOUT IBM

IBM's greatest invention is the IBMer. We believe that through the application of intelligence, reason and science, we can improve business, society and the human condition, bringing the power of an open hybrid cloud and AI strategy to life for our clients and partners around the world.

Restlessly reinventing since 1911, we are not only one of the largest corporate organizations in the world, we're also one of the biggest technology and consulting employers, with many of the Fortune 500 companies relying on the IBM Cloud to run their business.

At IBM, we pride ourselves on being an early adopter of artificial intelligence, quantum computing and blockchain. Now it's time for you to join us on our journey to being a responsible technology innovator and a force for good in the world.

IBM is proud to be an equal-opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, or other characteristics protected by the applicable law. IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.

OTHER RELEVANT JOB DETAILS

When applying to jobs of your interest, we recommend that you do so for those that match your experience and expertise. Our recruiters advise that you apply to not more than 3 roles in a year for the best candidate experience. For additional information about location requirements, please discuss with the recruiter following submission of your application.

Client-provided location(s): Bangalore, India

Job ID: IBM-56374

Employment Type: OTHER

Posted: 2025-09-05T18:52:10