Principal Architect: Data Center AI CPU Performance

Samsung Electronics America; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 219,000 - 351,000; Full time

Job summary

Samsung Semiconductor in the United States is seeking a Principal Engineer to shape the architecture and performance direction for next-generation CPU platforms. You will collaborate with RTL and silicon teams to translate architectural vision into implementable designs and validate them across modeling and silicon.

This role emphasizes AI workloads and memory-centric architectures in a data-center context.

Qualifications

• Master’s degree with 18 years of experience or PhD with 15 years in related field.
• 5+ years in CPU microarchitecture, architecture research, or performance engineering.
• Experience with RISC-V, ARM, or x86 cores and vector accelerators is relevant.
• Proven use of quantitative performance analysis and modeling to drive architectural directions.

Responsibilities

• Define the application-specialization direction for next-generation CPU cores, including agentic AI and memory-centric architectures.
• Lead end-to-end performance analysis using architectural simulators and RTL, guiding key architectural trade-offs and decisions.
• Translate workload characterization and performance insights into architectural requirements and long-term design direction.
• Drive architecture-to-implementation alignment with design teams, ensuring architectural intent is carried through RTL and silicon.
• Mentor Senior and Staff engineers and provide technical leadership across multiple projects and architectural domains.
• Drive research and technical contributions leading to patents and publications.

Skills

CPU microarchitecture

RISC-V

ARM cores

x86 cores

Performance analysis

Front-end design

Out-of-order execution

Load/store units

Architectural simulators

C/C++

Python

RTL implementation

Education

Master's degree in Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field with 18 years of relevant experience, or PhD with 15 years of relevant experience

Tools

gem5

Job description

Samsung Semiconductor in the United States is seeking a Principal Engineer to shape the architecture and performance direction for next-generation CPU platforms. You will collaborate with RTL and silicon teams to translate architectural vision into implementable designs and validate them across modeling and silicon.

This role emphasizes AI workloads and memory-centric architectures in a data-center context.