SoC Performance Architect (Server CPU) - PhD New Grads Welcome!

Company:

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.

Job Area:

Engineering Group, Engineering Group > SoC Architecture

General Summary:

*Early Career or PhD New Grads Welcome to Apply*

We are seeking a SoC Performance Architect to lead server CPU workload analysis, performance modeling, competitive projection, and optimization across hardware and software. This role focuses on end-to-end system performance for complex server workloads, identifying bottlenecks across the compute stack, and driving actionable improvements in CPU, memory, interconnect, I/O, firmware, OS, compiler, and application behavior.

The ideal candidate combines deep architectural expertise with analytical rigor and hands-on performance debugging experience.

In this role, you will collaborate across architecture, design, software, systems, and partner teams to evaluate current and future SoC products, generate performance insights, and inform product and feature decisions. You will enable and analyze complex server workloads on internal platforms, build analytical and empirical models, conduct sensitivity studies, and project performance for internal and external competitive products.

Key Responsibilities

• Define performance methodologies, metrics, and KPI frameworks for consistent workload tracking and feature evaluation.
• Conduct hardware/software sensitivity studies.
• Perform bottleneck analysis across CPU cores, cache hierarchy, memory subsystem/controllers, on-chip fabric, and I/O.
• Use profiling and PMU tools to capture hotspots, call stacks, CPI breakdowns, memory behavior, and microarchitectural stall data.
• Build analytical and empirical models for workload behavior, scaling, and feature sensitivity.
• Develop performance projections for internal roadmap products and external competitors.
• Identify and prioritize optimization opportunities; drive cross-functional execution with architecture, design, compiler, OS, firmware, and application teams.
• Communicate findings, tradeoffs, and product implications to technical and executive stakeholders.

Required Qualifications

• PhD in Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, or related field
• Deep understanding of CPU microarchitecture, including pipelines, out-of-order execution, branch prediction, caches, prefetching, SMT, and performance bottlenecks.
• Strong knowledge of SoC architecture, including on-chip interconnect/fabric, memory controllers, DRAM systems, coherency, and I/O subsystems.
• Strong understanding of OS and compiler behavior, including scheduling, memory management, synchronization, code generation, optimization, and runtime effects on performance.
• Hands-on experience with industry-standard performance analysis and profiling tools.
• Experience enabling and debugging complex server workloads in Linux environments.
• Strong scripting and data analysis skills for handling large profiling datasets and developing performance models.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with pre-silicon performance modeling, simulation, or trace-based analysis.
• Familiarity with PMU-based top-down analysis, CPI decomposition, memory subsystem analysis, and sensitivity modeling.

What You Will Deliver

• Deep workload characterization of internal and competitive server platforms.
• Performance models and projections for current and future SoC products.
• Clear bottleneck analysis and optimization guidance across hardware and software.
• Sensitivity studies quantifying the impact of key architectural and software parameters.
• Data-driven recommendations that improve product performance, efficiency, and competitiveness.

Minimum Qualifications:

•    Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, or related field and 2+ years of Systems Engineering or related work experience.
OR
Master's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, or related field and 1+ year of Systems Engineering or related work experience.
OR
PhD in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, or related field.

• 2+ years of experience in one or more system architecture technology areas and products (e.g., Power System, Shared Resource Management, Limits/Thermal Management, Hardware Islands).

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EEO Employer: Qualcomm is an equal opportunity employer; all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, Veteran status, or any other protected classification.

Qualcomm expects its employees to abide by all applicable policies and procedures, including but not limited to security and other requirements regarding protection of Company confidential information and other confidential and/or proprietary information, to the extent those requirements are permissible under applicable law.

Pay range and Other Compensation & Benefits:

$147,900.00 - $221,900.00

The above pay scale reflects the broad, minimum to maximum, pay scale for this job code for the location for which it has been posted. Even more importantly, please note that salary is only one component of total compensation at Qualcomm.  We also offer a competitive annual discretionary bonus program and opportunity for annual RSU grants (employees on sales-incentive plans are not eligible for our annual bonus).  In addition, our highly competitive benefits package is designed to support your success at work, at home, and at play. Your recruiter will be happy to discuss all that Qualcomm has to offer – and you can review more details about our US benefits at this link.

If you would like more information about this role, please contact Qualcomm Careers.