PhD Position (f/m/d) - Memory-Centric NPU Architectures and Emerging Memory Technologies for Edge AI - Hamburg, Germany
Originally posted 3 September 2026 by the employer — open 14 days.
About the role
This PhD position focuses on exploring memory-centric AI accelerator architectures that integrate NPUs with emerging memory technologies for Edge AI.
What you'll do
- Develop architectural modeling and simulation frameworks.
- Investigate the integration of emerging memory technologies into AI accelerators.
- Build performance, power, and area (PPA) evaluation methodologies for AI hardware design.
- Evaluate real-world AI workloads including CNNs, Transformers, LLMs, VLMs, and multimodal AI systems.
- Analyze trade-offs across performance, power, memory bandwidth, silicon area, scalability, and reliability.
What you'll need
- Master's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Microelectronics, or Embedded Systems.
- Strong background in computer architecture, digital design, embedded systems, semiconductor memory systems, AI accelerators and NPUs, or hardware/software co-design.
- Experience with Python and C/C++.
- Knowledge of computer architecture simulation, performance modeling, or hardware design methodologies.
- Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
- Very good written and spoken English.
Nice to have
- AI accelerator and NPU architecture.
- RTL development using Verilog/SystemVerilog/VHDL.
- FPGA prototyping.
- Computer architecture simulators.
- Memory hierarchy optimization.
- eDRAM, GCRAM, MRAM, ReRAM, or CXL-based memory systems.
Skills: NPU, incremental learning, embedded AI, hardware/software co-design, MCU/MPU
This role has been open 14 days — well below the 65-day median for AI/ML Hardware Engineering roles.
AI/ML Hardware Engineering · AI ML Hardware
|
Open roles in category
518
|
Median days open
65 d
|
Median salary
$226k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | NXP Semiconductors | All employers we track in this specialty (518 roles · 78 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 13 | 518 |
| Open roles in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family | 127 | 5791 · 144 employers |
| Median days open | 56 d | 65 d (−9 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $226k |
Skills observed across this category: NPU, incremental learning, embedded AI, hardware/software co-design, MCU/MPU
Who's hiring in this category
- Qualcomm · 107 open roles · median 98 d
- NVIDIA · 87 open roles · median 64 d
- AMD · 43 open roles · median 69 d
- Micron Technology · 29 open roles · median 41 d
- Mobileye · 25 open roles · median 51 d
- Analog Devices · 14 open roles · median 20 d
How we counted: 518 open AI/ML Hardware Engineering (AI ML Hardware) roles from 78 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 17 Sept 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 Software, Firmware & Systems family row. Figures refresh nightly.