Senior Staff AI Accelerator Performance Architect - Sunnyvale, CA, United States
$175,000 - $275,000 USD yearly
Originally posted 17 September 2026 by the employer — open 0 days.
About the role
What you'll do
- Build and extend analytical, simulation-based or trace-driven models across workloads, architectural features and product generations.
- Analyze AI workloads, from individual kernels through end-to-end inference and training execution, to determine where time, bandwidth, compute and capacity are spent.
- Identify hardware and software bottlenecks and quantify opportunities to improve latency, throughput, utilization and energy efficiency.
- Evaluate proposed architectural features and determine their expected performance return across representative workloads.
- Improve modeling methodology, validation and correlation with RTL, emulation and silicon measurements.
What you'll need
- 7+ years of experience in performance analysis, performance modeling or architecture exploration for CPUs, GPUs, AI accelerators or other high-performance computing systems.
- Strong understanding of hardware architecture developed through hardware, compiler, kernel, runtime or system-performance work.
- Experience developing analytical, simulation-based or trace-driven performance models using Python, C++ or similar environments.
- Solid understanding of processor architecture, memory systems, interconnects, parallel execution and hardware resource constraints.
- MS or PhD in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science or equivalent practical experience.
Nice to have
- Performance analysis of transformer inference or training workloads.
- Experience with Attention, GEMM/GEMV, collective communication, mixture-of-experts, quantization or memory-capacity-constrained execution.
- Kernel optimization, compiler performance, runtime scheduling or distributed accelerator systems.
- Model validation using RTL simulation, emulation, FPGA prototypes or silicon measurements.
- Competitive analysis of AI accelerators and large-scale AI systems.
Skills: AI accelerator, performance architect, performance models, hardware architecture, workload analysis, AI workloads
This role has been open 0 days — well below the 65-day median for AI/ML Hardware Engineering roles.
AI/ML Hardware Engineering · AI ML Hardware
|
Open roles in category
512
|
Median days open
65 d
|
Median salary
$226k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | Cerebras | All employers we track in this specialty (512 roles · 77 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 7 | 512 |
| Open roles in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family | 73 | 5856 · 143 employers |
| Median days open | 53 d | 65 d (−12 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $226k |
Skills observed across this category: AI accelerator, performance architect, performance models, hardware architecture, workload analysis, AI workloads
Who's hiring in this category
- Qualcomm · 105 open roles · median 99 d
- NVIDIA · 85 open roles · median 64 d
- AMD · 42 open roles · median 65 d
- Micron Technology · 32 open roles · median 36 d
- Mobileye · 25 open roles · median 50 d
- Analog Devices · 14 open roles · median 21 d
How we counted: 512 open AI/ML Hardware Engineering (AI ML Hardware) roles from 77 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 18 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.