Senior Staff AI Accelerator Performance Architect - Sunnyvale, CA, United States
$175,000 - $275,000 USD yearly
Originally posted 17 September 2026 by the employer.
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 21 days — well below the 76-day median for AI/ML Hardware Engineering roles.
AI/ML Hardware Engineering · AI ML Hardware
|
Open roles in category
520
|
Median days open
76 d
|
Median salary
$235k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | Cerebras | All employers we track in this specialty (520 roles · 76 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 9 | 520 |
| Open roles in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family | 78 | 6085 · 146 employers |
| Median days open | 74 d | 76 d (−2 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $235k |
Skills observed across this category: AI accelerator, performance architect, performance models, hardware architecture, workload analysis, AI workloads
Who's hiring in this category
- Qualcomm · 100 open roles · median 113 d
- NVIDIA · 92 open roles · median 57 d
- AMD · 40 open roles · median 69 d
- Micron Technology · 31 open roles · median 63 d
- Mobileye · 19 open roles · median 71 d
- Analog Devices · 17 open roles · median 27 d
How we counted: 520 open AI/ML Hardware Engineering (AI ML Hardware) roles from 76 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 9 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.
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