Research Engineer: AI-Driven CPU Microarchitecture

Huawei Technologies Research & Development (UK) Ltd; Cambridge; On-site; GBP 60,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

Huawei Research and Development UK Limited in Cambridge is seeking an ambitious Research Engineer to explore CPU microarchitecture using reinforcement learning, LLM agents and learned models. You will work on Kirin CPU Team, translating research papers into validated simulator results and practical hardware proposals.

The role is suited for early-career researchers who can bridge theory and implementation, with experience in gem5/ChampSim or related tools and a strong publishing or open-source

Qualifications

• Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering or related field or equivalent practical experience.
• Solid understanding of out-of-order CPU microarchitecture including speculation and memory hierarchy.
• Strong C++ and Python programming abilities.
• Hands-on depth in at least two areas: simulation, RL/model training, LLM agents, compilers or performance kernels.
• Proven ability to build non-trivial end-to-end systems and conduct rigorous experiments.

Responsibilities

• Build RL, Bayesian and LLM-agent-driven design-space exploration over gem5 and cycle-accurate models.
• Develop agentic pipelines to read papers, implement mechanisms in simulators and run experiments with proper reward design and checks.
• Train surrogate and ML performance models to predict IPC and PPA while reducing simulation cost.
• Characterise emerging CPU workloads (on-device LLM inference, vector extensions, KV-cache behavior) and translate findings into microarchitecture proposals.
• Identify bottlenecks as hardware-, software-, or joint-fixable and collaborate with compiler/runtime/kernel teams.
• Turn strong results into patents, internal reports or publications.

Skills

C++

Python

CPU microarchitecture

Reinforcement learning

LLM agent systems

Simulation tools

Open-source contributions

Education

BSc/MSc/PhD in CS/EE or related field

Tools

gem5

ChampSim

LLVM/MLIR

CUDA/Triton

SIMD

Job description

Huawei Research and Development UK Limited in Cambridge is seeking an ambitious Research Engineer to explore CPU microarchitecture using reinforcement learning, LLM agents and learned models. You will work on Kirin CPU Team, translating research papers into validated simulator results and practical hardware proposals.

The role is suited for early-career researchers who can bridge theory and implementation, with experience in gem5/ChampSim or related tools and a strong publishing or open-source