Senior Software Architect, Physical AI

Job Title

Senior Software Architect, Physical AI

Role Summary

Drive the architecture and delivery of a developer-facing Physical AI SDK that enables robotics and drone applications to use FPGA acceleration via portable, composable, high-performance APIs. Work across software, hardware integration, and customer teams to produce production-quality SDKs, libraries, and reference applications.

Teamwork includes integrating frameworks such as Holoscan and ROS 2 with Altera FPGA platforms. Travel approximately 30%.

Experience Level

Senior - requires extensive experience; the role lists 15+ years of relevant experience.

Responsibilities

Accountable for architecting, implementing, and shipping the Physical AI SDK and associated components.

• Define and guide SDK architecture, APIs, hardware abstraction, device discovery, lifecycle management, diagnostics, and plugin interfaces.
• Architect high-performance modules for sensor ingestion, camera/video pipelines, ISP, compression, memory and buffer management, synchronization, networking, localization, and AI pre-processing.
• Integrate FPGA acceleration into Holoscan and ROS 2 workflows, including minimum/zero-copy data paths, DMA, metadata, timestamping, QoS, and deterministic execution.
• Develop Linux-based C++ libraries, Python bindings, utilities, deployment tools, documentation, and reference applications.
• Collaborate with FPGA, hardware, AI, systems, and customer teams to validate latency, throughput, resource utilization, and reliability.
• Mentor engineers and provide technical leadership from architecture through release.

Requirements

Must-have technical skills and experience for immediate contribution.

• Strong C++ and Linux systems development skills, including concurrency, performance optimization, and debugging.
• Proven experience designing and shipping SDKs, middleware, runtimes, device frameworks, or developer-facing platform software.
• Understanding of heterogeneous data movement across CPU, GPU, FPGA, DMA, shared memory, and high-speed I/O.
• Experience with Holoscan, ROS 2, GStreamer, ffmpeg, OpenCV, or similar robotics/real-time frameworks.
• Experience with hardware-accelerated video, vision, sensor, networking, or signal-processing pipelines.
• Strong communication skills and demonstrated ownership of complex, cross-functional projects.

Nice-to-have:

• Experience with Altera FPGAs, PCIe, Ethernet, MIPI CSI-2/D-PHY, GMSL, FPGA acceleration, or HLS/RTL integration.
• Familiarity with zero-copy, RDMA, GPUDirect, high-speed Ethernet, embedded Linux, Yocto, containers, and cross-compilation.
• Experience with camera systems, ISP pipelines, video compression, sensor fusion, SLAM, or robotics perception.
• Experience defining SDK roadmaps, compatibility policies, release criteria, and developer documentation.

Education Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related field is required (posting also specifies 15+ years of relevant experience). No other degree or certification requirements are stated.

About the Company

Company: Altera

Headquarters: Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

Altera provides leadership programmable solutions for applications ranging from cloud to edge, unveiling limitless AI possibilities. Their extensive product portfolio includes FPGAs, CPLDs, Intellectual Property, development tools, and System on Modules aimed at accelerating innovation in various fields.