Senior Software Performance Engineer - Autonomous Vehicles - CA, Santa Clara, United States
Originally posted 13 August 2026 by the employer. Relisted by the employer on 14 August 2026.
About the role
NVIDIA is looking for a Senior Software Performance Engineer to optimize end-to-end autonomous driving applications. The role focuses on optimizing latency and throughput for self-driving solutions across multi-computer and heterogeneous hardware architectures.
What you'll do
- Develop, maintain, and optimize latency and throughput of NVIDIA's L2/L3/L4 autonomous driving solutions. - Devise acceleration strategies and patterns to improve software architecture and efficiency on computers with multiple heterogeneous hardware engines while meeting product goals. - Develop efficient product code in C++, utilizing algorithmic parallelism from GPGPU programming (CUDA) and ARM NEON while following safety standards such as MISRA. - Collaborate with hardware, product, OS, and safety teams to design products.
What you'll need
- MS or PhD degree in Computer Science, Computer Architecture, Electrical Engineering, or related field (or equivalent experience). - 12+ years of relevant professional experience working on autonomous vehicles software. - C and C++ programming skills. - Understanding of programming and debugging techniques, especially for parallel architectures. - Understanding of system software, operating systems, and computer architecture. - Experience with performance analysis, optimizations, and benchmarking.
Skills: autonomous driving, performance optimization, C++, CUDA, GPGPU
This role has been open 180 days — well above the 53-day median for Infrastructure/Platform Software roles.
Infrastructure/Platform Software · Infrastructure Platform
|
Open roles in category
1004
|
Median days open
53 d
|
Median salary
$224k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | NVIDIA | All employers we track in this specialty (1004 roles · 89 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 286 | 1004 |
| Open roles in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family | 997 | 6277 · 144 employers |
| Median days open | 51 d | 53 d (−2 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $224k |
Skills observed across this category: autonomous driving, performance optimization, C++, CUDA, GPGPU
Who's hiring in this category
- NVIDIA (this employer) · 286 open roles · median 52 d
- Qualcomm · 65 open roles · median 52 d
- AMD · 57 open roles · median 26 d
- Graphcore · 50 open roles · median 100 d
- Intel Corporation · 48 open roles · median 14 d
- Cerebras · 35 open roles · median 90 d
How we counted: 1004 open Infrastructure/Platform Software (Infrastructure Platform) roles from 89 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 25 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.