Embedded Software Developer Co-op (4-16 months, January 2025)

Ciena is committed to our people-first philosophy. Our teams enjoy a culture focused on prioritizing a personalized and flexible work environment that empowers an individual’s passions, growth, wellbeing and belonging. We’re a technology company that leads with our humanity—driving our business priorities alongside meaningful social, community, and societal impact.

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Why Ciena? 

• We are a company rooted in people—seeking to create a vibrant and inclusive environment, where everyone feels they can belong.  
• Accelerate your career path by gaining hands-on experience and exposure to the latest technology. Our interns and graduates work on real projects in real time in world class labs. Be a part of tomorrow’s future – today. 
• Mentoring. Networking. Leadership Opportunities. We recognize that learning does not stop when you leave school - we champion a team environment for development and provide the tools to achieve success. 
• We are big proponents of life-work integration. Our people make a significant difference at Ciena, but we want to shine light on their differences outside of working hours too. CienaCares supports non-profit causes important to employees bymatching employee financial contributions and dedicating time for volunteering. 

The Opportunity:

Work term of 4, 8, 12 or 16 months starting in January 2025.

How You Will Contribute:

We design, implement, and maintain real-time embedded platform and application software for several of Ciena’s flagship products. Functional areas in our scope range from low level bit flipping drivers to high level software state machines for interfacing with external applications:

• Linux and VxWorks kernels and base software components
• Drivers for proprietary and 3rd party ASICs, FPGAs, and other hardware components.
• Hardware/software interface to provide bridging of various abstraction layers.
• Fault and alarms subsystems to detect, report and maintain defects and manage their hysteresis and co-relations.
• System applications such as traffic/equipment protection, performance monitoring, etc.
• Software Development Kits that abstract the underlying low-level software and hardware to facility platform application developments and integration.

What Does Ciena Expect of You?

• A sense of urgency – what is important to the customer is equally important to you.  You make getting things done a priority.
• Integrity – you hold yourself to the highest level of personal and professional standards of conduct.
• A commitment to innovation – you continually seek to learn, understand modern technologies and ever-changing market conditions, and endeavor to apply that knowledge to Ciena’s advantage.
• You embrace change – thriving in a diverse environment of ever-changing priorities and sometimes stressful situations.
• The flexibility to work independently with minimal supervision as well as part of a broader team.

The Must Haves:

• Enrolled in a bachelor’s or master's degree in computer or electrical engineering, computer science, or similar disciplines
• Experience with C or C++

Assets:

• Developing software for embedded systems or telecom products 
• Understanding of CPU hardware architectures, hardware functional specifications, hardware timing diagrams, device data sheets
• Understanding of real-time operating systems and embedded systems
• Software development tools such as git, BitBucket, Gerrit, Jira, etc.
• Unit test frameworks such as Google Test, JUnit, Robot, PyTest, and the like
• Debuggers and tools (e.g., gdb), especially for troubleshooting embedded systems in user space and kernel space
• High-level programming and scripting languages such as Java, Python, Perl, Tcl, bash
• YANG modeling language and toolchains
• Software development methodologies such as Agile or Waterfall
• Familiarity with datacom and telecom concepts such as DWDM, SONET/SDH, OTN, Ethernet, OSI Model, TCP/IP, MPLS