$275,000 - $360,000 USD yearly
About the role
The Lead SoC Architect leads architecture definition, technical direction, and subsystem integration for semiconductor products, operating as an individual contributor and technical lead. The role defines compute architectures across platforms including AI, GPU, multimedia, networking, RISC-V, or datacenter-class SoCs.
What you'll do
- Define top-level SoC architecture, subsystem partitioning, and microarchitecture requirements for complex semiconductor products.
- Drive architecture tradeoff analysis for performance, power, area, bandwidth, latency, and scalability.
- Lead performance modeling, workload analysis, and bottleneck identification using C/C++/SystemC or similar environments.
- Define memory hierarchy, NoC/interconnect strategy, coherency architecture, and cache structures.
- Evaluate and integrate third-party IPs including CPU, GPU, NPU, PCIe, DDR/LPDDR, Ethernet, multimedia, and security subsystems.
- Collaborate with RTL, verification, physical design, firmware, software, and system teams through architectural test plans, silicon bring-up, debug, and post-silicon optimization.
What you'll need
- Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field.
- 10+ years of experience in SoC architecture, ASIC development, or complex semiconductor system design.
- Technical background in one or more areas: CPU/GPU/NPU architectures, NoC/interconnect architectures, cache coherency protocols (CHI/ACE/CXL), high-speed interfaces (PCIe, UCIe, Ethernet), memory systems (DDR5, LPDDR5X, HBM), or power/performance optimization.
- Strong knowledge of RTL development, verification methodologies, and architecture modeling tools.
- Familiarity with firmware/software interaction in complex SoC systems.
Nice to have
- Experience with AI accelerator, GPU, networking, RISC-V, or datacenter SoC architectures.
- Experience with chiplet-based or multi-die architectures.
- Familiarity with advanced process technologies and package integration.
- Experience with emulation, FPGA prototyping, and system-level validation.
- Knowledge of Linux drivers, runtime software, or system software architecture.
Skills: SoC architect, graphics processors, AI hardware, chip architecture, performance modeling
More semiconductor jobs: SoC design jobs · Sunnyvale jobs
This role has been open 172 days — well above the 79-day median for SoC/Chip Architecture roles.
SoC/Chip Architecture · SOC Architecture
|
Open roles in category
485
|
Median days open
79 d
|
Category median salary (all employers)
$230k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | Bolt Graphics | All employers we track in this specialty (485 roles · 67 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 8 | 485 |
| Open roles in the wider Digital Design & Verification family | 16 | 3525 · 120 employers |
| Median days open | 124 d | 79 d (+45 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $230k |
Skills observed across this category: SoC architect, graphics processors, AI hardware, chip architecture, performance modeling
Who's hiring in this category
- Qualcomm · 78 open roles · median 88 d
- NVIDIA · 67 open roles · median 81 d
- AMD · 39 open roles · median 68 d
- Arm Holdings · 29 open roles · median 11 d
- Apple · 28 open roles · median 12 d
- Micron Technology · 20 open roles · median 111 d
How we counted: 485 open SoC/Chip Architecture (SOC Architecture) roles from 67 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 8 Nov 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.
