Senior Staff Engineer, SoC Application Engineering

Job Title

Senior Staff Engineer, SoC Application Engineering

Role Summary

Lead technical engagement for R‑Car SoC-based robotics and GPU compute solutions, focusing on humanoid and advanced robotic platforms. Work with customers, ecosystem partners, and internal teams to drive architecture, bring-up, integration, optimization, and reference designs.

Role emphasizes embedded SoC expertise, GPU/heterogeneous compute, system-level debugging, and enabling AI/perception workloads on robotic platforms.

Experience Level

Senior-level; requires 10+ years of relevant experience.

Responsibilities

Primary responsibilities include customer-facing technical leadership, platform bring-up, and development of robotic reference solutions.

• Lead technical programs for R‑Car SoC in humanoid robotics, physical AI, and autonomous platforms.
• Collaborate with the Physical AI & Humanoid Lab to develop prototypes, proofs-of-concept, demonstrations, and reference platforms.
• Drive partner ecosystem projects and deliver reusable customer solutions and reference designs.
• Support architecture, platform bring-up, software integration, validation, and production for customers and partners.
• Perform system-level debugging and root-cause analysis across Linux/Ubuntu, ROS2, device drivers, firmware, GPU/AI accelerators, memory/SMMU/IOMMU, IPC, and heterogeneous multicore systems.
• Develop benchmarks, reference applications, and demonstrations showcasing R‑Car compute and AI capabilities.
• Analyze and optimize system performance across CPU, GPU, NPU, DSP, memory, and other accelerators; profile and tune GPU/AI workloads.
• Support RFI/RFQ activities, architecture and design reviews, and technical debug sessions with customers and partners.

Requirements

Must-have technical skills, tools, and experience.

• 10+ years in embedded systems, semiconductor application engineering, robotics, automotive electronics, or related fields.
• Proficient in C and C++ for embedded development and debugging.
• Deep knowledge of SoC architecture: CPU, GPU, memory, firmware, operating systems, drivers, middleware, and hardware accelerators.
• Hands-on experience with embedded Linux, BSPs, bootloaders, Linux kernel, device drivers, and system-level debugging.
• Experience with heterogeneous multicore architectures, memory management, IPC, DMA, and shared memory.
• Practical experience with GPU architecture and GPU compute; familiarity with Vulkan, OpenCL, OpenGL ES, Vulkan Compute, or OpenVX.
• Experience with system and GPU performance analysis using tracing, profiling, logging, and debugging tools.
• Familiarity with embedded AI/ML workloads and deployment on heterogeneous SoCs; experience with AI runtimes and inference pipelines is beneficial.
• Strong customer-facing communication, problem-solving, and technical leadership skills.

Education Requirements

Bachelor's, Master's, or Ph.D. in Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Robotics, or a related technical field (as stated in the posting).

About the Company

Company: Renesas

Headquarters: Hitachinaka, Japan

Renesas is a global leader in embedded semiconductor solutions, providing high-quality products across automotive, industrial, infrastructure, and IoT sectors. With over 22,000 employees in more than 30 countries, the company focuses on scalable solutions that enhance user experience and drive innovation while committed to sustainability and energy efficiency.