Senior Software Engineer — RISC-V Instruction Set Simulator (Simulator Engineer)
$167,100 - $250,700 USD yearly
Originally posted 1 September 2026 by the employer.
Work on a high-performance, production-grade RISC-V Instruction Set Simulator.
About the role
This role involves building a high-performance, production-grade RISC-V Instruction Set Simulator (ISS) that serves as the golden reference model for a family of 64-bit RISC-V processors.
What you'll do
- Implement the RISC-V specification chapters into working C code.
- Maintain the fetch/decode/execute engine, memory protection, virtual memory, and privilege-level logic.
- Work on the harness that runs the ISS alongside RTL for co-simulation.
- Write targeted unit tests that exercise individual features and compare against expected results.
- Contribute to and maintain simulator extensions and utilities.
What you'll need
- Solid C skills and comfort reading unfamiliar codebases.
- Comfort with basic processor architecture, including pipelines, memory, privilege levels, and interrupts.
- Strong attention to detail for spec-driven work.
- Willingness to read a specification document and turn it into tested code.
- Exposure to low-level or systems programming, such as embedded systems, operating systems, compilers, or hardware description.
Nice to have
- Experience with RISC-V, x86, or ARM architecture.
- Familiarity with simulators or emulators such as QEMU, Spike, gem5, or similar tools.
- Experience with GDB, ELF binaries, or bare-metal bring-up.
- Background in hardware verification or RTL co-simulation.
- Knowledge of Linux internals.
- Python 3 experience.
Skills: RISC-V, Instruction Set Simulator, ISS, co-simulation, C programming, processor architecture
This role has been open 43 days — well below the 61-day median for Systems Software Engineering roles.
Systems Software Engineering · Systems Software
|
Open roles in category
681
|
Median days open
61 d
|
Median salary
$217k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | Qualcomm | All employers we track in this specialty (681 roles · 73 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 166 | 681 |
| Open roles in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family | 705 | 6164 · 146 employers |
| Median days open | 78 d | 61 d (+17 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $217k |
Skills observed across this category: RISC-V, Instruction Set Simulator, ISS, co-simulation, C programming, processor architecture
Who's hiring in this category
- Qualcomm (this employer) · 163 open roles · median 77 d
- NVIDIA · 137 open roles · median 47 d
- AMD · 59 open roles · median 54 d
- Mobileye · 27 open roles · median 69 d
- Broadcom · 21 open roles · median 50 d
- Arm Holdings · 20 open roles · median 111 d
How we counted: 681 open Systems Software Engineering (Systems Software) roles from 73 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 Software, Firmware & Systems family row. Figures refresh nightly.