CPU Micro-architect/RTL Designer - Austin, Texas, United States of America
$211,900 - $317,900 USD yearly
Originally posted 4 August 2026 by the employer.
About the role
As a CPU Micro-architecture and RTL Design Engineer, you will work with chip architects to conceive of the micro-architecture and help with architecture/product definition through early involvement in the product life-cycle.
What you'll do
- Explore high performance strategies working with the CPU modeling team.
- Develop and specify microarchitecture from high-level exploration through detailed specification.
- Develop, assess, and refine RTL design to target power, performance, area, and timing goals.
- Support the design verification team in executing the functional verification strategy.
- Support performance verification to ensure RTL design meets performance goals.
- Work with the multi-functional engineering team to implement and validate physical design on aspects of timing, area, reliability, and testability.
What you'll need
- Thorough knowledge of microprocessor architecture including expertise in one or more of the following areas: instruction fetch and decode, branch prediction, instruction scheduling and register renaming, out-of-order execution, integer and floating point execution, load/store execution, prefetching, cache and memory subsystems.
- Knowledge of Verilog and/or VHDL.
- Experience with simulators and waveform debugging tools.
- Knowledge of logic design principles along with timing and power implications.
- Understanding of low power microarchitecture techniques.
- Understanding of high performance techniques and trade-offs in a CPU microarchitecture.
- Experience using a scripting language such as Perl or Python.
This role has been open 71 days — well above the 60-day median for Digital/RTL Design roles.
Digital/RTL Design · RTL Design
|
Open roles in category
1037
|
Median days open
60 d
|
Median salary
$185k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, and who else is hiring
| Metric | Qualcomm | All employers we track in this specialty (1037 roles · 103 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 140 | 1037 |
| Open roles in the wider Digital Design & Verification family | 381 | 3202 · 115 employers |
| Median days open | 63 d | 60 d (+3 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $185k |
Who's hiring in this category
- Qualcomm (this employer) · 140 open roles · median 64 d
- Synopsys · 86 open roles · median 32 d
- AMD · 71 open roles · median 38 d
- Analog Devices · 47 open roles · median 50 d
- NVIDIA · 44 open roles · median 60 d
- NXP Semiconductors · 42 open roles · median 86 d
How we counted: 1037 open Digital/RTL Design (RTL Design) roles from 103 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 18 Oct 2026. Specialty figures count only roles carrying this exact specialty label, so an employer's related work in neighbouring specialties is not included there — it is counted in the wider Digital Design & Verification family row. Figures refresh nightly.