Network Interface Controller (NIC) Architect

Job Title

Network Interface Controller (NIC) Architect

Role Summary

Lead design and architecture of next-generation high-performance NICs for AI networking. Define end-to-end hardware and software architectures, influence product strategy, engage with ecosystem partners, and drive standards and customer-facing technical solutions.

Experience Level

Senior-level role. Requires 16+ years of experience in NIC and network-system architecture.

Responsibilities

Primary responsibilities include system architecture, customer engagement, and standards leadership.

• Define end-to-end hardware/software architectures for RDMA, Ultra Ethernet, RoCE, and multipath transport.
• Architect NIC datapaths, offloads, programmable congestion control, load balancing, and multiplane networking.
• Translate customer, product, and standards requirements into implementable architectures using executable modeling and workload analysis.
• Design and evaluate queue, buffer, telemetry, and memory architectures to meet target workloads without post-silicon fixes.
• Define APIs and trade-offs with programmable logic teams (FPGA/ASIC/firmware/driver interfaces).
• Decompose collective-communication libraries (e.g., NCCL, RCCL) to specify NIC primitives and hardware-software interfaces.
• Serve as technical interface to strategic customers and drive multi-vendor convergence and standards efforts.
• Influence product strategy and cross-organizational engineering teams.

Requirements

Key qualifications and technical abilities required for the role.

• Must-have: 16+ years of dedicated NIC and network-system architecture experience.
• Must-have: Deep expertise in RDMA transports, congestion control algorithms, dynamic connection management, and multipath packet spraying.
• Must-have: Extensive FPGA/ASIC systems experience and hands-on hardware/software co-design, including DMA and firmware/driver interfaces.
• Must-have: Proven cross-organizational technical leadership and experience guiding hardware, software, firmware, and verification teams.
• Must-have: Experience defining composable hardware/software plug-in architectures or programmable packet-processing pipelines.
• Must-have: Active participation or leadership experience in network standardization bodies.
• Nice-to-have: Issued patents, academic publications, or technical reports related to network systems.

Education Requirements

MS or Ph.D. in Engineering, Computing, or a closely related discipline.

About the Company

Company: Broadcom

Headquarters: Irvine, California, United States

Broadcom is a global technology leader that designs, develops, and supplies a wide range of semiconductor and infrastructure software solutions. The company is known for its innovations in wireless and broadband communications, enabling a connected world.