Senior System Software Engineer - GPU Power and Performance Management - CA, Santa Clara, United States
$184,000 - $356,500 USD yearly
Originally posted 22 September 2026 by the employer.
About the role
This role involves designing, developing, and debugging production software for GPU performance states (P-states) and Power Management Controllers. The work supports dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) and power-management technologies for data-center GPUs.
What you'll do
- Architect, build, implement, and debug GPU power and performance management software, with emphasis on P-state management and DVFS.
- Develop control policies, mechanisms, and real-time software that optimize GPU performance, power, thermals, and energy efficiency KPIs under data-center workloads.
- Drive features across the full product lifecycle, including requirements, architecture, implementation, pre-silicon validation, silicon bring-up, productization, and production support.
- Collaborate with GPU architects and hardware designers to define hardware-software interfaces and shape power-management capabilities.
- Lead investigation and resolution for complex power, performance, stability, and reliability issues spanning firmware, drivers, hardware, and platform software.
- Develop validation strategies and automation for functional correctness, transition latency, performance-per-watt, and robustness.
What you'll need
- BS or MS degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
- 8+ years of industry experience crafting system software, embedded firmware, device drivers, or other hardware-related production software.
- Strong programming skills in C, including experience developing, debugging, and maintaining complex low-level software.
- Deep understanding of operating-system fundamentals, device-driver architecture, embedded or real-time software, concurrency, interrupt handling, and hardware programming.
- Experience interpreting hardware specifications and developing software interfaces for registers, telemetry, interrupts, and control mechanisms.
- Strong understanding of computer architecture and hardware-software interactions.
Skills: GPU power management, P-states, DVFS, device drivers, system software, C programming
This role has been open 0 days — well below the 49-day median for Infrastructure/Platform Software roles.
Infrastructure/Platform Software · GPU Software Stack
|
Open roles in category
221
|
Median days open
49 d
|
Median salary
$221k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | NVIDIA | All employers we track in this specialty (221 roles · 19 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 116 | 221 |
| Open roles in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family | 1001 | 5948 · 143 employers |
| Median days open | 47 d | 49 d (−2 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $221k |
Skills observed across this category: GPU power management, P-states, DVFS, device drivers, system software, C programming
Who's hiring in this category
- NVIDIA (this employer) · 109 open roles · median 47 d
- AMD · 57 open roles · median 43 d
- Qualcomm · 20 open roles · median 118 d
- Intel Corporation · 9 open roles · median 41 d
- Arm Holdings · 5 open roles · median 90 d
- Bolt Graphics · 3 open roles · median 49 d
How we counted: 221 open Infrastructure/Platform Software (GPU Software Stack) roles from 19 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 23 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.