Staff Engineer — AI-Driven CPU Architecture & Performance

Engg; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Engg is seeking a Staff Engineer, Architecture & Performance Research Engineer for Data Center and Agentic AI CPU to lead architecture exploration and performance validation. The role focuses on next-generation CPU/RISC-V microarchitecture and contrasting workloads in data center and agentic AI contexts.

You will own microarchitectural domains, apply AI-assisted methodologies, and develop performance models and simulators, collaborating across teams to shape silicon design and publication

Qualifications

• Master's degree (or PhD) with 5+ years (PhD) or 8+ years (Master's) of relevant experience.
• 4+ years of experience in CPU microarchitecture or performance engineering.
• Experience designing RISC-V, ARM, x86 CPU cores, or GPU/NPU vector unit.
• Strong understanding of out-of-order execution, branch prediction, pipelines, speculation, and cache/memory systems.
• Hands-on experience with architectural simulators such as gem5.
• Proficiency in C/C++ and Python.
• Experience analyzing large-scale performance data and traces.

Responsibilities

• Propose new architecture ideas and take ownership of one or more microarchitectural domains (front-end, mid-end, back-end).
• Use AI-driven design methodologies to rapidly implement architectural ideas and validate them on real silicon.
• Build, extend, and validate performance models and architectural simulators.
• Perform CPI/IPC analysis and identify root causes of performance bottlenecks.
• Evaluate microarchitectural features and optimizations using trace-driven, analytical, and cycle-accurate models.
• Characterize workloads and benchmarks, including SPEC, server, client, AI/ML, agentic AI, and internal traces.
• Translate performance analysis and modeling results into architectural direction and design decisions.

Skills

C/C++

Python

Performance analysis

CPU microarchitecture

Architectural modeling

Education

Master's degree in Computer Engineering or Computer Science

PhD in a related field

Tools

gem5

Job description

Engg is seeking a Staff Engineer, Architecture & Performance Research Engineer for Data Center and Agentic AI CPU to lead architecture exploration and performance validation. The role focuses on next-generation CPU/RISC-V microarchitecture and contrasting workloads in data center and agentic AI contexts.

You will own microarchitectural domains, apply AI-assisted methodologies, and develop performance models and simulators, collaborating across teams to shape silicon design and publication