Senior System Performance Engineer - Data Center/AI
$122,500 - $183,700 USD yearly
Originally posted 26 June 2026 by the employer.
About the role
In this role, you will collaborate with software, hardware, and architecture teams to optimize power, performance, and thermal behavior across Qualcomm Snapdragon Chipsets. You will research, simulate, and validate system performance across server, data center, and AI use cases.
What you'll do
- Enable, profile, and analyze complex concurrent system use-cases in emulation and software environments including Android, Linux, and Windows. - Define and document performance and power analysis plans for system use-cases across CPU, GPU, and AI/ML workloads. - Identify areas of performance optimization in the SoC for both software and hardware architectures. - Direct triage of complex performance issues to determine root causes and present results to internal and external stakeholders. - Define and develop automation tooling to improve team analysis and operational efficiency. - Provide technical leadership and mentor junior engineers across multiple programs.
What you'll need
- Experience researching, simulating, and validating system-level performance across hardware and software architectures. - Background in power, performance, and thermal optimization for complex systems. - Experience profiling system use-cases across software environments such as Linux, Android, or Windows. - Demonstrated ability to analyze workloads and perform root-cause triage on complex performance issues.
Nice to have
- Master’s degree in Computer Engineering. - 4 years of practical post-silicon experience in power and performance analysis of complex SoCs. - Programming and scripting skills in Python, C, or C++. - Knowledge of workloads including AI and LLM. - Understanding of memory hierarchy, system interconnects, and ARM SoC specifications including SMMU, GIC, Coresight-PMU, and ARM v8/v9. - Experience with graphics and compute APIs such as Vulkan, OpenGL, DX12, or CUDA.
Skills: system performance optimization, power performance thermal, SoC architectures, AI/ML workloads, post-silicon
This role has been open 118 days — well above the 76-day median for SoC/Chip Architecture roles.
SoC/Chip Architecture · SOC Architecture
|
Open roles in category
479
|
Median days open
76 d
|
Median salary
$238k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | Qualcomm | All employers we track in this specialty (479 roles · 67 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 79 | 479 |
| Open roles in the wider Digital Design & Verification family | 413 | 3298 · 115 employers |
| Median days open | 85 d | 76 d (+9 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $238k |
Skills observed across this category: system performance optimization, power performance thermal, SoC architectures, AI/ML workloads, post-silicon
Who's hiring in this category
- Qualcomm (this employer) · 79 open roles · median 85 d
- NVIDIA · 54 open roles · median 71 d
- Apple · 38 open roles · median 14 d
- AMD · 35 open roles · median 71 d
- Arm Holdings · 27 open roles · median 119 d
- Micron Technology · 22 open roles · median 111 d
How we counted: 479 open SoC/Chip Architecture (SOC Architecture) roles from 67 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 22 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 Digital Design & Verification family row. Figures refresh nightly.