Principal Automotive System Software Architect

NVIDIA AI; Santa Clara (CA); On-site; USD 272,000 - 431,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Benefits package

Job summary

NVIDIA seeks a Principal System Software Engineer to drive next-generation automotive platform software, system architecture, and performance engineering. You will work across hardware, kernel, AI, middleware, and platform teams to deliver high-performance, safety-critical system software for NVIDIA automotive compute platforms.

You will lead architecture, develop, debug, and optimize low-level software, mentor engineers, and push for technical excellence while solving complex system challenges

Qualifications

• Bachelor's, Master's, or PhD in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or related field (or equivalent experience).
• 15+ years of substantial hands-on experience in systems software, embedded systems, platform software, kernel development, or performance engineering.
• Deep expertise in Linux system internals, kernel architecture, device drivers, and low-level system software development.
• Strong programming skills in C/C++ with experience in Python or scripting languages.
• Proven experience debugging and optimizing complex distributed or heterogeneous computing systems.
• Strong background in performance analysis and optimization across CPU, GPU, memory, storage, and interconnect subsystems.
• Experience with embedded Linux, RTOS, virtualization technologies, or multi-core system architectures.
• Demonstrated ability to lead technically while remaining deeply hands-on in development, debugging, and architecture activities.
• Experience collaborating across hardware and software organizations in highly matrixed environments.
• Strong communication, problem-solving, and technical leadership skills.

Responsibilities

• Drive system software architecture and technical direction for next-generation automotive compute platforms.
• Lead performance optimization initiatives across CPU, GPU, memory, storage, networking, and platform subsystems.
• Design, develop, debug, and optimize low-level system software including kernel, drivers, middleware, runtime frameworks, and platform services.
• Collaborate closely with silicon, firmware, AI, and platform architecture teams to deliver optimized end-to-end solutions.
• Analyze complex system bottlenecks and develop scalable solutions to improve performance, reliability, determinism, and efficiency.
• Drive software bring-up, profiling, debugging, and performance tuning for new automotive platforms.
• Contribute hands-on to critical software development, architecture reviews, debugging, and system optimization efforts.
• Mentor engineers and help drive a culture of technical excellence, innovation, and execution.

Skills

Linux kernel internals

Kernel development

C/C++ programming

Python scripting

Performance optimization

Embedded/Linux systems

Multi-core architectures

Debugging complex systems

System software engineering

Technical leadership

Cross-functional collaboration

Automotive software

Education

BS/MS/PhD in CS/CE/EE

Tools

GCC toolchain

perf tooling

GDB

Job description

NVIDIA seeks a Principal System Software Engineer to drive next-generation automotive platform software, system architecture, and performance engineering. You will work across hardware, kernel, AI, middleware, and platform teams to deliver high-performance, safety-critical system software for NVIDIA automotive compute platforms.

You will lead architecture, develop, debug, and optimize low-level software, mentor engineers, and push for technical excellence while solving complex system challenges