CPU Performance Engineer, Platform Architecture - Santa Clara, United States
Originally posted 6 October 2026 by the employer.
About the role
This role is for a CPU Performance Engineer focusing on CPU micro-architecture within the CPU Architecture and Performance Team.
What you'll do
- Drive advanced exploration for iPhone, iPad, and Mac CPU architectures.
- Push innovation in branch prediction, code/data prefetchers, novel prediction schemes, and CPU pipelines.
- Collaborate with CPU designers in micro-architecture and RTL to assess feasibility and refine ideas through modeling.
- Analyze specific single-threaded and multi-threaded workloads across product categories to identify bottlenecks and improvement opportunities.
- Maintain and improve the simulation environment to enable data-driven decisions and boost team productivity.
What you'll need
- BS degree.
- Experience with CPU architecture and micro-architecture.
- Experience in performance and/or power simulation environments.
- Coding experience, including object-oriented programming with C and C++.
- Experience in scripting languages such as Perl or Python.
Nice to have
- 10+ years of relevant industry experience.
- MS or PhD in Electrical or Computer Engineering or Computer Science.
- Understanding of common data structures and algorithms.
- Knowledge in software design patterns.
- Familiarity with SIMD and vector architectures.
- Knowledge of OS internals and compiler technologies.
Skills: CPU architecture, micro-architecture, performance simulation, workloads, bottlenecks
This role has been open 3 days — well below the 76-day median for SoC/Chip Architecture roles.
SoC/Chip Architecture · SOC Architecture
|
Open roles in category
461
|
Median days open
76 d
|
Median salary
$236k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | Apple | All employers we track in this specialty (461 roles · 63 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 34 | 461 |
| Open roles in the wider Digital Design & Verification family | 70 | 3175 · 113 employers |
| Median days open | 3 d | 76 d (−73 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $236k |
Skills observed across this category: CPU architecture, micro-architecture, performance simulation, workloads, bottlenecks
Who's hiring in this category
- Qualcomm · 77 open roles · median 79 d
- NVIDIA · 60 open roles · median 63 d
- AMD · 36 open roles · median 58 d
- Apple (this employer) · 32 open roles · median 3 d
- Arm Holdings · 27 open roles · median 106 d
- NXP Semiconductors · 21 open roles · median 108 d
How we counted: 461 open SoC/Chip Architecture (SOC Architecture) roles from 63 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 9 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.