Senior Software Architect, Physical AI

191 Altera Corporation; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 232,000 - 341,000; Full time

Job summary

Altera is seeking a Senior Software Architect to help build our Physical AI SDK—a developer-facing platform enabling robotics and drones to use FPGA acceleration via portable, high-performance APIs. You will connect frameworks such as NVIDIA Holoscan, ROS 2, Linux, and ONNX Runtime to Altera FPGA platforms.

This hands-on role combines software architecture, hardware/software integration, and customer-focused solution delivery, with mentoring across architecture to release.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in CS/CE/EE or related field, 15+ years experience.
• Strong C++ and Linux systems-development skills, incl. concurrency and debugging.
• Experience designing and shipping SDKs or developer-facing platforms.
• Understanding of CPU/GPU/FPGA data movement and high-speed I/O.
• Experience with Holoscan, ROS 2, GStreamer, ffmpeg, or OpenCV.
• Experience with hardware-accelerated video/vision pipelines.
• Strong communication and ownership of cross-functional projects.

Responsibilities

• Define and guide SDK architecture, APIs, hardware abstraction, device discovery, lifecycle management, diagnostics, and plugin interfaces.
• Architect high-performance modules for sensor ingestion, camera and video pipelines, ISP, compression, memory and buffer management, synchronization, networking, localization, and AI pre-processing.
• Work with engineering to integrate FPGA acceleration into Holoscan and ROS 2 workflows, including zero-copy data paths and DMA.
• Develop Linux-based C++ libraries, Python bindings, utilities, deployment tools, and documentation.
• Collaborate with FPGA, hardware, AI, systems, and customer teams to validate latency, throughput, resource utilization, and reliability.
• Mentor engineers and provide technical leadership from architecture through release.

Skills

C++

Linux

Concurrency

SDK design

ROS 2

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science/Engineering/related

Tools

Holoscan

ROS 2

GStreamer

ffmpeg

OpenCV

Job description

Job Details

Job Details: Job Description: Altera is seeking a Senior Software Architect to help build our Physical AI SDK—a developer-facing platform that enables robotics and drones applications to use FPGA acceleration through portable, composable, high-performance APIs. You will connect frameworks such as NVIDIA Holoscan, ROS 2, Linux, and ONNX Runtime to Altera FPGA platforms. This hands-on role combines software architecture, production development, hardware/software integration, and customer-focused solution delivery.

$231.5K - $341.1K USD

The pay range below is for Bay Area California only. Actual salary may vary based on a number of factors including job location, job-related knowledge, skills, experiences, trainings, etc. We also offer incentive opportunities that reward employees based on individual and company performance.

We use artificial intelligence to screen, assess, or select applicants for the position. Applicants must be eligible for any required U.S. export authorizations.

Responsibilities

• As software architect, define and guide SDK architecture, APIs, hardware abstraction, device discovery, lifecycle management, diagnostics, and plugin interfaces.
• Architect high-performance modules for sensor ingestion, camera and video pipelines, ISP, compression, memory and buffer management, synchronization, networking, localization, and AI pre-processing.
• Work with the engineering to integrate FPGA acceleration into Holoscan and ROS 2 workflows, including minimum or zero-copy data paths, DMA, metadata, timestamping, QoS, and deterministic execution.
• Help develop Linux-based C++ libraries, Python bindings, utilities, deployment tools, and take responsibility of documentation, and reference applications.
• Collaborate with FPGA, hardware, AI, systems, and customer teams to validate latency, throughput, resource utilization, and reliability.
• Mentor engineers and provide technical leadership from architecture through release.

Qualifications

• Required Qualifications Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related field, plus 15+ years of relevant experience.
• Strong C++ and Linux systems-development skills, including concurrency, performance optimization, and debugging.
• Experience designing and shipping SDKs, middleware, runtimes, device frameworks, or developer-facing platform software.
• Understanding of heterogeneous data movement across CPU, GPU, FPGA, DMA, shared memory, and high-speed I/O.
• Experience with Holoscan, ROS 2, GStreamer, ffmpeg, OpenCV, or a comparable robotics or real-time framework.
• Experience with hardware-accelerated video, vision, sensor, networking, or signal-processing pipelines.
• Strong communication skills and demonstrated ownership of complex, cross-functional projects.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Altera FPGAs, PCIe, Ethernet, MIPI CSI-2/D-PHY, GMSL, FPGA acceleration, or HLS/RTL integration.
• Experience with robotics end-to-end pipeline.
• Familiarity with zero-copy, RDMA, GPUDirect, high-speed Ethernet, embedded Linux, Yocto, containers, and cross-compilation.
• Experience with camera systems, ISP pipelines, video compression, sensor fusion, SLAM, or robotics perception.
• Experience defining SDK roadmaps, compatibility policies, release criteria, and developer documentation.

Travel Requirements: 30%

Job Type: Regular Shift: Shift 1 (United States of America) Primary Location: San Jose, California, United States Additional Locations:

Posting Statement

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, religious creed, sex, national origin, ancestry, age, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, military and veteran status, marital status, pregnancy, gender, gender expression, gender identity, sexual orientation or any other characteristic protected by local law, regulation, or ordinance.

About Altera

Altera: Accelerating Innovators Altera provides leadership programmable solutions that are easy-to-use and deploy in applications from cloud to edge, offering limitless AI possibilities. Our end-to-end broad portfolio of products including FPGAs, CPLDs, Intellectual Property, development tools, System on Modules, SmartNICs and IPUs provide the flexibility to accelerate innovation. Altera is helping to shape the future through pioneering innovation that unlocks extraordinary possibilities for everyone on the planet.