Senior CPU Architecture and Benchmarking Engineer

Job Title

Senior CPU Architecture and Benchmarking Engineer

Role Summary

Senior engineer responsible for designing and executing low-level microbenchmarks to characterize CPU microarchitecture, correlating software and silicon behavior, and translating results into actionable architectural guidance. Works closely with silicon labs, simulation, backend and RTL teams to influence CPU design and performance.

Experience Level

Senior - experience expectations: Bachelor's degree + 8+ years or Master's degree + 6+ years of relevant industry experience (see Education Requirements for details).

Responsibilities

Design and run focused experiments to reveal microarchitectural behavior and quantify impacts on performance and power. Communicate findings to engineering and product stakeholders.

• Design, implement, and analyze microbenchmarks targeting branch prediction, instruction fetch/decode, execution units, memory subsystem, prefetchers, and power interactions.
• Investigate and document microarchitectural details through systematic benchmarking and analysis.
• Evaluate the impact of OS schedulers, runtime libraries, compilers, and firmware on CPU performance and power efficiency.
• Identify power/performance gaps and propose concrete architectural mitigations or solutions.
• Correlate benchmarking results with pre-silicon models and post-silicon measurements by collaborating with silicon lab, simulation, backend, and RTL teams.
• Explore and evaluate microarchitectural ideas in CPU performance simulators to provide quantitative value estimates.
• Develop and maintain tooling, test infrastructure, and analysis frameworks to support reproducible, scalable benchmarking workflows.
• Prepare clear written reports and presentations for engineering and senior leadership audiences.

Requirements

Must-have technical skills and experience for immediate contribution; preferred skills that improve impact are listed as nice-to-have.

• Deep understanding of out-of-order CPU microarchitecture: pipeline stages, execution resources, memory hierarchy, and power/performance interactions.
• Proven experience designing and interpreting low-level microbenchmarks for CPU characterization.
• Proficiency in assembly programming and low-level performance tooling (examples: PMU/EMON counters, VTune or equivalent).
• Strong background in performance analysis methodologies, bottleneck identification, and quantitative trade-off evaluation.
• Proficiency in C/C++ and scripting (Python or similar) for benchmark development and data analysis.

Nice-to-have:

• Experience with cycle-accurate CPU performance simulators and modeling new microarchitectural features.
• Knowledge of software stack impacts on CPU performance (OS scheduler, memory allocators, compiler code generation, BIOS/firmware tuning).
• Experience reading or debugging RTL to validate microarchitectural hypotheses.
• Track record of turning benchmarking insights into architectural recommendations or technical publications.

Education Requirements

Minimum: Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related discipline with 8+ years of relevant industry experience; OR a Master's degree in a related discipline with 6+ years of relevant industry experience. Fields explicitly listed: Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science. No certifications specified.

About the Company

Company: Intel Corporation

Headquarters: Santa Clara, California, USA

Intel Corporation is a leading multinational technology company known for its innovative semiconductor solutions, including microprocessors, artificial intelligence accelerators, and memory products. Headquartered in the United States, Intel focuses on cutting-edge technology and a collaborative working environment, driving advancements in semiconductor manufacturing to meet global demands. The company emphasizes professional development and aims to shape the future of technology through groundbreaking designs.