Principal Competitive Analysis, Custom Silicon Architect - DC GPU - CA, San Jose, United States
Originally posted 14 October 2026 by the employer.
Lead competitive intelligence and hands-on performance analysis for custom silicon used in AI and data center computing.
About the role
As Principal Competitive Analysis, Custom Silicon Architect - DC GPU, you will lead competitive intelligence and hands-on performance analysis for custom silicon used in AI and data center computing. This role will build a fact-based view of competing accelerators, internally developed silicon, platforms, software capabilities, pricing, and go-to-market strategies.
What you'll do
- Develop and maintain comprehensive competitive assessments, including feature matrices, product comparisons, pricing analyses, and market landscape reviews.
- Monitor competitor product launches, model releases, acquisitions, partnerships, pricing changes, funding activity, and go-to-market motions.
- Evaluate competitive performance hands-on using publicly available cloud instances and accessible software environments.
- Create executive-ready competitive insights that influence product strategy, roadmap prioritization, pricing, and investment decisions.
- Establish repeatable processes and tooling for collecting, validating, maintaining, and distributing competitive intelligence.
- Partner closely with Product Management to inform roadmap decisions and identify areas of strategic differentiation.
What you'll need
- Extensive experience in competitive analysis, product strategy, product management, performance engineering, or a related role in semiconductors, cloud computing, AI infrastructure, or data center systems.
- Deep understanding of processors, AI accelerators, custom silicon, system architecture, software stacks, and cloud deployment models.
- Hands-on experience evaluating hardware or software performance in cloud environments, including benchmark design, data collection, and results interpretation.
- Demonstrated ability to analyze product capabilities, performance, pricing, and market dynamics using incomplete or rapidly changing information.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to influence across technical and business organizations.
- BS/MS in Electrical or Computer Engineering.
Nice to have
- Experience analyzing custom silicon developed by hyperscalers, cloud providers, AI infrastructure companies, or semiconductor vendors.
- Familiarity with AI training and inference workloads, high-performance computing, networking, memory systems, compilers, runtime software, and performance optimization.
- Experience with benchmarking tools, scripting, data analysis, cloud provisioning, and performance-per-dollar or total-cost modeling.
- Established network across the semiconductor, cloud, or AI infrastructure ecosystem and experience gathering insight from customers, partners, analysts, and public sources.
- Experience supporting senior leadership, long-range planning, product definition, or strategic investment decisions.
Skills: Competitive Architect, custom silicon, AI and data center computing, accelerators, system architecture
This role has been open 0 days — well below the 79-day median for SoC/Chip Architecture roles.
SoC/Chip Architecture · SOC Architecture
|
Open roles in category
453
|
Median days open
79 d
|
Median salary
$233k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | AMD | All employers we track in this specialty (453 roles · 63 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 35 | 453 |
| Open roles in the wider Digital Design & Verification family | 260 | 3192 · 115 employers |
| Median days open | 63 d | 79 d (−16 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $233k |
Skills observed across this category: Competitive Architect, custom silicon, AI and data center computing, accelerators, system architecture
Who's hiring in this category
- Qualcomm · 71 open roles · median 85 d
- NVIDIA · 57 open roles · median 68 d
- AMD (this employer) · 34 open roles · median 63 d
- Apple · 34 open roles · median 8 d
- Arm Holdings · 27 open roles · median 111 d
- NXP Semiconductors · 21 open roles · median 113 d
How we counted: 453 open SoC/Chip Architecture (SOC Architecture) roles from 63 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 14 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.