SoC Platform Architect - RISC-V
Digital Design & SoC Architecture
$174,400 - $261,600 USD yearly
Originally posted 28 September 2026 by the employer.
About the role
What you'll do
- Create highly scalable SoC architecture using RISC-V architecture.
- Comprehend product requirements to steer generation of proper architecture.
- Perform trade-off analysis in the solution space to produce the most optimal architecture.
- Collaborate with architects, technical leads, hardware, and software engineers in deriving architectural solutions.
- Generate detailed architectural specifications and work closely with the design team to implement the architecture.
What you'll need
- Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Information Systems, Computer Science, or related field and 4+ years of Systems Engineering or related work experience; OR Master's degree and 3+ years; OR PhD and 2+ years.
- Experience in RISC-V AP platform architecture, particularly in AIA, CBQRI, IOMMU, debug security.
- Strong foundation of silicon design principles and architectural trade-offs.
- Ability to span and connect levels of abstraction across system-design, high-level languages, OS, HW/SW interface, micro-architecture, and silicon implementation.
- Background in architecture (IP or SoC), and/or front-end design/verification (micro-architecture).
- Demonstrated deep technical knowledge and achievements at the SoC, sub-system or large IP levels as micro-architect or architect.
- Programming ability for modeling and automation (OOP C, Python preferred) with experience in software development best practices.
Nice to have
- Experience in SoC areas such as boot, timebase management, network, security architecture, reset architecture, debug architecture, system level control/management with components such as BMC, ECU.
- Experience with SoC architectures including heterogeneous compute, NoC/interconnect, memory-systems, multicore, multi-die, cache hierarchies, shared memory, I/O, coherency, compression, security.
- Experience with Resource and Power Management, Security Architecture, System-level debug, Safety, reliability, and high-resilience/high-availability systems, AI & Machine Learning, Control and Real-time systems.
- Experience with High-level Operating Systems (e.g., Android, Linux, Windows) and Real-time operating systems (e.g., Zephyr, FreeRTOS).
- Experience with Front-end Digital Hardware Design or Verification.
- Experience with Arm system architectures (e.g., Cortex-A, Cortex-R, Cortex-M, CoreSight).
- Experience with High-speed I/O (USB, PCIe, CXL), External memory and storage architectures (e.g., LPDDR, NAND Flash, NOR Flash).
- Experience with Networking & Connectivity (e.g., Ethernet, WLAN, Cellular, CAN).
- Experience with Behavioral, functional and performance modeling, Power and/or performance optimization through simulation & modeling, Simulator architectures and frameworks (C or Python-based preferred), Analytical modeling for performance and power.
- Master’s degree or PhD in Electronic Engineering, Computer Science or related field.
- 5 years of SoC/IP architecture or micro-architecture/front-end-design experience.
- Contributions demonstrating higher-level analysis and design for candidates with primarily a micro-architecture/design background.
Skills: SoC Platform Architecture, RISC-V, heterogenous compute, memory systems, interconnects
Market context
This role has been open 4 days — well below the 73-day median for SoC/Chip Architecture roles.
SoC/Chip Architecture · SOC Architecture
|
Open roles in category
442
|
Median days open
73 d
|
Median salary
$237k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | Qualcomm | All employers we track in this specialty (442 roles · 64 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 71 | 442 |
| Open roles in the wider Digital Design & Verification family | 373 | 3110 · 114 employers |
| Median days open | 80 d | 73 d (+7 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $237k |
Skills observed across this category: SoC Platform Architecture, RISC-V, heterogenous compute, memory systems, interconnects
Who's hiring in this category
- Qualcomm (this employer) · 71 open roles · median 80 d
- NVIDIA · 57 open roles · median 57 d
- AMD · 36 open roles · median 59 d
- Arm Holdings · 27 open roles · median 100 d
- Renesas Electronics · 22 open roles · median 57 d
- NXP Semiconductors · 20 open roles · median 102 d
How we counted: 442 open SoC/Chip Architecture (SOC Architecture) roles from 64 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 3 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.