System Software Engineer - GPU Power and Performance Management - CA, Santa Clara, United States
$124,000 - $241,500 USD yearly
Originally posted 29 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.
What you'll do
- Design, build, implement, and debug GPU power and performance management software, with emphasis on P-state management and DVFS.
- Develop control policies and software mechanisms that optimize GPU performance, power, thermals, and energy efficiency under demanding data-center workloads.
- Support features through full product lifecycle: requirements, architecture, implementation, pre-silicon validation, silicon bring-up, productization, and production support.
- Analyze interactions among workloads, clocks, voltages, power limits, thermals, telemetry, and system-level policies.
- Investigate, triage, and resolve power, performance, stability, and reliability issues spanning firmware, drivers, hardware, and platform software.
What you'll need
- BS or MS degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
- 2+ years of relevant industry experience, or strong coursework, internship, co-op, or project experience in system software.
- Strong programming skills in C, with the ability to develop, debug, and maintain low-level kernel software.
- Good understanding of operating-system fundamentals, computer architecture, device-driver architecture, embedded or real-time software, concurrency, interrupt handling, and hardware programming.
- Ability to independently debug and analyze across multiple layers of software and hardware.
- Ability to read and understand hardware specifications and software interface definitions.
Skills: GPU Power Management, performance states, DVFS, power-management software, low-level kernel software, hardware-software interfaces
This role has been open 9 days — well below the 59-day median for Systems Software Engineering roles.
Systems Software Engineering · Systems Software
|
Open roles in category
683
|
Median days open
59 d
|
Median salary
$213k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | NVIDIA | All employers we track in this specialty (683 roles · 73 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 128 | 683 |
| Open roles in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family | 966 | 6078 · 146 employers |
| Median days open | 50 d | 59 d (−9 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $213k |
Skills observed across this category: GPU Power Management, performance states, DVFS, power-management software, low-level kernel software, hardware-software interfaces
Who's hiring in this category
- Qualcomm · 169 open roles · median 74 d
- NVIDIA (this employer) · 128 open roles · median 51 d
- AMD · 59 open roles · median 50 d
- Mobileye · 29 open roles · median 73 d
- Broadcom · 22 open roles · median 45 d
- Arm Holdings · 20 open roles · median 107 d
How we counted: 683 open Systems Software Engineering (Systems Software) roles from 73 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 10 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.