Principal SoC Architect, Robotics and Automotive

Job Title

Principal SoC Architect, Robotics and Automotive

Role Summary

Own the end-to-end hardware architecture of system-on-chip (SoC) platforms for Edge AI, robotics, and autonomous driving. Lead cross-disciplinary design work that integrates GPUs, vision accelerators, and real-time processors into a single silicon fabric.

Experience Level

Senior — 15+ years of architecture and high-performance silicon design experience.

Responsibilities

Deliver and validate SoC architectures across design phases and collaborate with software, safety, and product teams.

• Define and drive hardware architecture from concept through bring-up and ecosystem enablement.
• Co-design hardware features with software, deep learning, and safety teams for low-latency robotics spatial computing, sensor fusion, and autonomous driving pipelines.
• Perform performance, power, and area (PPA) modeling and optimization for thermally constrained robotic enclosures and automotive ECUs.
• Author architecture specifications and develop models to validate design choices.
• Define and execute architectural validation plans to meet real-time execution and safety metrics.
• Participate in post-silicon debug, performance tuning, and customer-facing documentation for tier-1 robotics and automotive partners.
• Provide technical leadership across abstraction layers from micro-architecture to application software.

Requirements

Must-have technical experience and domain knowledge; nice-to-have items listed separately.

• Must have: 15+ years of deep architecture design experience in high-performance silicon and demonstrated SoC top-level definition experience.
• Practical knowledge of high-speed interfaces and robotics/automotive I/O such as PCIe, camera/GMSL interfaces, and Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN).
• Experience with multimedia/vision accelerator pipelines, CPU/GPU cache coherency, virtualization, and hardware security.
• Deep understanding of deterministic and real-time compute, RTOS support, deterministic latency, and mixed-criticality workloads.
• Proven cross-functional communication, negotiation, and technical problem-solving skills.

• Nice to have: Experience with functional safety and delivering solutions that meet safety requirements.
• Background mapping complex Edge AI workloads (e.g., transformer-based vision models, SLAM, path planning) onto hardware architectures.
• Experience using SystemC, C++, or Python for architectural simulation and modeling.

Education Requirements

Master's or PhD in Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

About the Company

Company: NVIDIA

Headquarters: Santa Clara, California, USA

NVIDIA is a global leader in accelerated computing, renowned for its innovative solutions in AI and digital twins that transform diverse industries. The company specializes in networking technologies, providing end-to-end InfiniBand and Ethernet solutions for servers and storage that optimize performance and scalability. NVIDIA serves sectors such as high-performance computing, enterprise data centers, and cloud computing, constantly reinventing its products and services to stay ahead in the market.