Principal Engineer, CPU Architecture & Performance Research

Responsibilities

• Define and evaluate CPU micro-architectural features for future cores including frontend, execution engine, memory hierarchy, and interconnect
• Lead performance analysis using simulators and RTL
• Develop and validate cycle-accurate, trace-driven, and statistical performance models
• Characterize workloads such as SPEC, server, client, AI/ML, and cloud to translate findings into architectural requirements
• Identify performance bottlenecks and propose data-driven optimizations
• Drive architecture-to-implementation alignment with design teams
• Collaborate with compiler, OS, and system architects on cross-stack performance issues
• Mentor senior and staff engineers and provide technical leadership
• Contribute to patents and publications

Requirements

• Master’s degree with 18+ years of experience in Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field (or PhD with 15+ years)
• 10+ years of experience in CPU microarchitecture and/or performance engineering
• Experience with RISC-V, ARM, or X86 architectures
• Deep understanding of out-of-order execution, branch prediction, pipelines, and speculation
• Expertise in cache coherence, memory systems, prefetching, and NUMA effects
• Hands-on experience with architectural simulators like gem5
• Strong programming skills in C/C++ and Python
• Familiarity with compiler optimizations and hardware/software co-design
• Experience analyzing large performance datasets and traces
• Proven track record in tapeouts, patents, or publications

Preferred Qualifications

• Background in power/performance/area (PPA) trade-off analysis
• Experience with SIMD, Vectors, or VME for AI inference workloads
• Prior technical leadership at Senior Staff or Principal level

About the Company

Samsung Semiconductor provides technology solutions that power smartphones, electric vehicles, hyperscale data centers, and IoT devices.