Senior System Performance Engineer

Job Title

Senior System Performance Engineer

Role Summary

Drive end-to-end performance characterization and optimization of Ethernet processing solutions across hardware, firmware, drivers, and system software. The role focuses on measuring throughput, latency, packet processing rate, and resource utilization, then identifying and resolving bottlenecks.

The engineer will collaborate with architects, hardware designers, firmware and driver teams, and performance architects to deliver high-performance Ethernet solutions for data center and edge networking use cases.

Experience Level

Senior level. The posting requests candidates with at least 2+ years of industry or research experience.

Responsibilities

Primary responsibilities include validating and improving system-level Ethernet performance from pre-silicon to post-silicon.

• Define and execute performance validation strategies for Ethernet hardware and software subsystems.
• Characterize system performance: throughput, packet processing rate (PPS), latency and jitter, buffer utilization, CPU and memory efficiency.
• Analyze packet-processing pipelines and identify bottlenecks across hardware, drivers, and software stacks.
• Develop methodologies to optimize Ethernet datapath performance for varying traffic patterns and workloads.
• Evaluate performance of Ethernet MAC, PHY, switch, NIC, and packet-processing hardware.
• Analyze bus utilization, DMA behavior, memory bandwidth, cache efficiency, and hardware acceleration engines.
• Perform performance characterization on both pre-silicon and post-silicon platforms.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams (architecture, hardware, firmware, drivers, performance architects) to drive fixes and optimizations.

Requirements

Must-have technical skills and experience for the role.

• Proven expertise in Ethernet networking and packet processing performance analysis.
• Experience with performance benchmarking, measurement of throughput/latency/PPS, and buffer/CPU/memory metrics.
• Ability to analyze hardware/software interaction and root-cause performance issues in drivers, firmware, and silicon.
• Familiarity with evaluating MAC, PHY, NIC, switch, and packet-processing hardware components and hardware acceleration engines.
• Experience characterizing pre-silicon and post-silicon platforms.
• Strong analytical skills and experience producing reproducible performance test results and recommendations.
• Ability to work collaboratively with architects, hardware designers, firmware and driver developers.

Education Requirements

Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science or Electronics. The posting requests at least 2+ years of industry or research experience.

About the Company

Company: NXP Semiconductors

Headquarters: Nijmegen, Netherlands

NXP Semiconductors N.V. is a global semiconductor company that provides High Performance Mixed Signal and Standard Product solutions. With over 45,000 employees and operations in more than 35 countries, NXP is a leader in secure connectivity solutions for embedded applications, catering to automotive, industrial IoT, mobile, and communication infrastructure markets. The company is committed to innovation and sustainability, advancing a smarter, safer, and more sustainable world through technology.