Principal System Software Engineer - CUDA Driver - CA, Santa Clara, United States
$272,000 - $431,250 USD yearly
Originally posted 14 October 2026 by the employer.
About the role
As a Principal System Software Engineer, you will work on the CUDA driver, a core component for accelerating general purpose computation on the GPU.
What you'll do
- Architect and implement new CUDA features
- Oversee and drive development efforts across multiple teams
- Collaborate with hardware architecture teams
- Define forward-looking improvements to CUDA APIs and programming model
- Design and maintain performance and precision modeling
- Write effective, maintainable, and well-tested code
- Develop code for multiple operating systems
What you'll need
- Bachelor of Science or Master of Science degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or related field (or equivalent experience)
- 15+ years of relevant systems software development experience
- Strong C programming skills
- Experience designing, debugging, and maintaining complex software stacks
- Background with operating system interfaces for threads, process control, and virtual memory
- Experience with HW/SW co-design
- Experience with perf. modeling using emulation/simulation
- Experience creating SW programming model exposures for HW features
Skills: CUDA driver, GPU, unified programming model, kernel mode drivers, HW/SW co-design
This role has been open 0 days — well below the 56-day median for Infrastructure/Platform Software roles.
Infrastructure/Platform Software · GPU Software Stack
|
Open roles in category
231
|
Median days open
56 d
|
Median salary
$236k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | NVIDIA | All employers we track in this specialty (231 roles · 20 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 114 | 231 |
| Open roles in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family | 993 | 6127 · 145 employers |
| Median days open | 55 d | 56 d (−1 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $236k |
Skills observed across this category: CUDA driver, GPU, unified programming model, kernel mode drivers, HW/SW co-design
Who's hiring in this category
- NVIDIA (this employer) · 117 open roles · median 55 d
- AMD · 53 open roles · median 65 d
- Qualcomm · 19 open roles · median 106 d
- Intel Corporation · 17 open roles · median 6 d
- Arm Holdings · 5 open roles · median 112 d
- d-Matrix · 2 open roles · median 120 d
How we counted: 231 open Infrastructure/Platform Software (GPU Software Stack) roles from 20 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 15 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 Software, Firmware & Systems family row. Figures refresh nightly.