A FirmwareEngineer behaves much like a SoftwareEngineer. The biggest difference is that firmware engineers work closer to the hardware on which their software is running. Because of this, a FirmwareEngineer tends to have more intimate knowledge of digital circuit design, things like hardware clock signals, timing diagrams, and other such things. In the wild, a firmware engineer can often be identified by the type of tools found in his office: an oscilloscope, a logic analyzer, a BDM or ICE, and probably too many cables for connecting all of the aforementioned tools.

-- BrianStPierre

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What, no burn station?

Their vocabulary tends to be a little different, too.  Including the ways in which they curse.

Bloody JTAG chain!  What do you mean we've got f---ing 27ns latency from an interrupt!?  And more colorful stuff.

Sprinkled among the aforementioned cables I have an assortment of hand-labeled EPROMs and Flash chips.  And boards that have no cans.  Cans?  We don't need no stinking cans!

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See also: EmbeddedSystemsEngineer, HardwareEngineer