AI-Driven CPU Architecture Research Engineer

Huawei Technologies Research & Development (UK) Ltd; Cambridge; On-site; GBP 60,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

Huawei Research and Development UK Limited in Cambridge is seeking an ambitious Research Engineer to work at the intersection of machine learning and CPU microarchitecture on the Kirin CPU Team at Huawei R&D UK (Cambridge).

You will use reinforcement learning, LLM agents and learned models to discover and validate improvements for next-generation out-of-order CPU cores, including agentic systems that turn research papers into simulated, measured results.

Qualifications

• Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering or a related field (BSc, MSc or PhD), or equivalent practical experience.
• Solid understanding of out-of-order CPU microarchitecture, including speculation, branch prediction, prefetching, caches and the memory hierarchy.
• Strong C++ and Python.
• Hands-on depth in at least two of the following: architectural or cycle-accurate simulation (gem5, ChampSim, Scarab or similar); reinforcement learning or model training and post-training (PPO, GRPO or similar); LLM agent systems and tool-driven automation; compilers or low-level performance kernels (LLVM/MLIR, CUDA/Triton, SIMD); evidence of building a non-trivial system end-to-end.
• Rigorous experimental methodology and the ability to read research papers critically.
• PhD (completed or in progress) in computer architecture or ML systems.
• Publications at ISCA, MICRO, HPCA or ASPLOS, or at MLSys, NeurIPS or ICML.
• Experience with ML-based prefetchers or branch predictors, including CBP or DPC championship entries.
• Familiarity with ARMv9 (SVE2, SME2) or RISC-V.
• Understanding of the hardware cost of microarchitecture features (storage, timing and power), without RTL design responsibility.
• Open-source contributions to gem5, ChampSim, LLVM/MLIR, or your own language, runtime or ML framework.

Responsibilities

• Build RL, Bayesian and LLM-agent-driven design-space exploration over gem5 and cycle-accurate models, using fast simulation for broad search and detailed models to validate the shortlisted candidates.
• Develop agentic pipelines that read architecture papers, implement the proposed mechanisms in simulators, run experiments and verify results, including the reward design, sandboxing and checks that catch invalid or reward-hacked outcomes.
• Train surrogate and ML performance models that predict IPC and PPA impact and reduce simulation cost.
• Characterise emerging workloads on CPUs, such as on-device LLM inference, matrix and vector extensions, and KV-cache memory behaviour, and translate the findings into microarchitecture proposals.
• Attribute performance bottlenecks as hardware-fixable, software-fixable or joint, and work with compiler, runtime and kernel engineers on co-design solutions.
• Turn strong results into patents, internal reports and, where appropriate, publications.

Skills

C++ & Python

RL model training

LLM agent systems

CPU microarchitecture

Experimental methodology

Open-source contribution

Education

Bachelor/Master/PhD in CS/CE/EE or equivalent

Tools

gem5

ChampSim

Scarab

LLVM/MLIR

CUDA/Triton

Job description

Huawei Research and Development UK Limited in Cambridge is seeking an ambitious Research Engineer to work at the intersection of machine learning and CPU microarchitecture on the Kirin CPU Team at Huawei R&D UK (Cambridge).

You will use reinforcement learning, LLM agents and learned models to discover and validate improvements for next-generation out-of-order CPU cores, including agentic systems that turn research papers into simulated, measured results.