Simulation Engineer - Mountain View, CA, United States
$230,000 - $285,000 USD yearly
Originally posted 12 June 2026 by the employer.
Build and own the software simulation stack for our AI accelerator.
About the role
This role involves building and owning the software simulation stack, including functional, instruction-, and performance-level models, for the AI accelerator.
What you'll do
- Design, build, and maintain the software simulators and models of our AI accelerator — functional / ISA simulators, cycle-approximate performance models, and the C++/Python infrastructure around them
- Build the pre-silicon development surface for the software teams: golden reference models, co-simulation, trace generation, and validation harnesses the compiler and runtime develop against daily
- Keep the simulators fast enough to be the daily target — multithreading, JIT / binary translation, and distributed runs so real workloads finish in reasonable time
- Correlate models against RTL, emulation, and first silicon as they arrive, and drive the deltas back into the model to keep it trustworthy
What you'll need
- Exceptional modern C++ for performance-critical systems software, plus strong Python for tooling and infrastructure
- 5+ years building simulators, emulators, virtual platforms, ISS, or large-scale systems/infrastructure software
- Solid computer-architecture fundamentals — pipelines, memory hierarchy, ISAs, and accelerator/GPU-class datapaths — enough to model hardware faithfully
- Real simulation/modeling judgment: functional vs. cycle-approximate trade-offs, validating against a reference, and optimizing the simulator's own performance
- Strong software-engineering practice — testing, CI, profiling, and debugging large long-lived codebases
Nice to have
- gem5 / QEMU / SystemC-TLM / Spike or custom simulators
- JIT / dynamic binary translation
- ML frameworks & workloads
- Compiler/runtime exposure
- Distributed simulation
- HW/SW co-design
Skills: software simulation stack, functional / ISA simulators, cycle-approximate performance models, C++/Python, computer-architecture fundamentals, HW/SW co-design
This role has been open 34 days — well below the 61-day median for Systems Software Engineering roles.
Systems Software Engineering · Systems Software
|
Open roles in category
689
|
Median days open
61 d
|
Median salary
$217k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | DensityAI | All employers we track in this specialty (689 roles · 72 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 1 | 689 |
| Open roles in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family | 10 | 6145 · 145 employers |
| Median days open | 34 d | 61 d (−27 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $217k |
Skills observed across this category: software simulation stack, functional / ISA simulators, cycle-approximate performance models, C++/Python, computer-architecture fundamentals, HW/SW co-design
Who's hiring in this category
- Qualcomm · 166 open roles · median 78 d
- NVIDIA · 137 open roles · median 47 d
- AMD · 64 open roles · median 50 d
- Mobileye · 28 open roles · median 74 d
- Broadcom · 21 open roles · median 51 d
- Arm Holdings · 20 open roles · median 112 d
How we counted: 689 open Systems Software Engineering (Systems Software) roles from 72 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 15 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.