Software Development Engineer - C++, Networking - CA, Santa Clara, United States
Originally posted 13 October 2026 by the employer.
Drive end-to-end delivery of the scale-up networking and GPU software stack for AMD Instinct™ GPU platforms.
About the role
This role involves driving end-to-end delivery of the scale-up networking and GPU software stack for AMD Instinct™ GPU platforms. The focus is on ensuring rack-scale AI systems deliver top performance, reliability, and scalability for large-scale training and inference.
What you'll do
- Define and drive the software architecture for scale-up switch fabrics, including Ethernet-based fabrics and emerging standards such as UALink and Ultra Ethernet.
- Lead switch software integration, including link bring-up, SerDes/retimer tuning, FEC/BER characterization, topology discovery, routing, congestion management, and telemetry.
- Architect and develop GPU firmware components (e.g., system management, power/thermal, security, RAS, fabric/link management), and drive firmware packaging and update flows (PLDM/Redfish) and BMC integration.
- Lead development and optimization of Linux kernel drivers for Instinct GPUs (amdgpu/KFD), covering memory management, GPU-to-GPU communication, partitioning, virtualization, error handling, and recovery.
- Drive enablement and performance of the ROCm stack on scale-up systems, including runtime, communication libraries (RCCL), and integration with frameworks like PyTorch, JAX, and inference serving engines (e.g., vLLM, SGLang).
- Own new-platform bring-up from pre-silicon (emulation/simulation) through first silicon, system integration, and production qualification.
What you'll need
- Experience across GPU and networking system software, from firmware and drivers up through the user-space stack.
- Ability to work at the hardware/software boundary and debug complex problems across layers (silicon, firmware, driver, fabric, and application).
- Expertise in setting technical direction for multiple teams.
- Extensive experience in system software development for GPUs, accelerators, NICs, or network switches.
- Strong background in data center networking: Ethernet (L1–L3), high-speed SerDes, FEC, RDMA/RoCE, congestion control, and switch ASIC programming (e.g., Broadcom SDK, SAI, SONiC).
- Hands-on experience with firmware development for SoCs or accelerators, including embedded C/C++, boot flows, power management, security, and BMC/out-of-band management (Redfish, PLDM, MCTP).
- Strong Linux kernel and device driver development experience (PCIe, DMA, IOMMU, memory management, interrupt handling).
- Knowledge of GPU architecture and GPU software stacks (ROCm/HIP, CUDA, or similar), and of collective communication libraries (RCCL/NCCL, MPI).
- Familiarity with deep learning frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, JAX, TensorFlow) and distributed training/inference at scale.
- Proven track record of leading new hardware platform bring-up and debugging complex hardware/software interactions using tools such as JTAG, protocol analyzers, and logic analyzers.
- Proficiency in C/C++ and Python.
Nice to have
- Familiarity with scale-up interconnects and fabrics such as UALink, Ultra Ethernet, AMD Infinity Fabric™, NVLink or similar.
- Experience with Go or Rust.
- Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related discipline; PhD a plus.
Skills: GPU software stack, ROCm, scale-up networking, Linux kernel drivers, GPU firmware, AI systems
This role has been open 1 day — well below the 51-day median for Infrastructure/Platform Software roles.
Infrastructure/Platform Software · Infrastructure Platform
|
Open roles in category
956
|
Median days open
51 d
|
Median salary
$235k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | AMD | All employers we track in this specialty (956 roles · 86 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 57 | 956 |
| Open roles in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family | 409 | 6164 · 146 employers |
| Median days open | 20 d | 51 d (−31 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $235k |
Skills observed across this category: GPU software stack, ROCm, scale-up networking, Linux kernel drivers, GPU firmware, AI systems
Who's hiring in this category
- NVIDIA · 287 open roles · median 44 d
- Qualcomm · 61 open roles · median 56 d
- AMD (this employer) · 53 open roles · median 22 d
- Graphcore · 44 open roles · median 89 d
- Cerebras · 39 open roles · median 79 d
- Intel Corporation · 36 open roles · median 13 d
How we counted: 956 open Infrastructure/Platform Software (Infrastructure Platform) roles from 86 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 14 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.