Staff Engineer, SoC PnP Architect

Job Title

Staff Engineer, SoC PnP Architect

Role Summary

Lead system-level performance analysis for SoC platforms across pre-silicon and post-silicon phases. Work with emulation, simulation, and silicon bring-up teams to identify bottlenecks, validate performance projections, and influence microarchitectural and platform-level design decisions.

Experience Level

Senior — typically 10+ years of SoC performance analysis experience in the semiconductor industry.

Responsibilities

Primary responsibilities include:

• Lead pre-silicon performance analysis using simulation and hardware emulation platforms.
• Perform post-silicon characterization, silicon bring-up support, and root-cause performance investigations.
• Analyze latency, bandwidth, throughput, and system bottlenecks across coherency, memory, and IO subsystems.
• Develop and use transaction-level tracing and protocol debugging for CHI, AXI, PCIe, CXL, etc.
• Correlate pre-silicon projections with silicon measurements and recommend design or firmware mitigations.
• Implement profiling, automation, and data-visualization tools in C/C++ and Python to support investigations.
• Work across firmware, software, validation, and architecture teams and present findings to influence decisions.

Requirements

Must-have:

• 10+ years of SoC performance analysis experience in semiconductor platforms.
• Hands-on experience with pre-silicon simulation and hardware emulation platforms (e.g., Palladium, Veloce, ZeBu or equivalent).
• Waveform-based debug, signal-level performance analysis, and transaction-level tracing expertise.
• Experience characterizing latency, bandwidth, throughput, and identifying system-level bottlenecks.
• Post-silicon experience: silicon bring-up, performance counter analysis, telemetry-driven investigations, and root-cause analysis.
• Strong understanding of coherent interconnects, DDR memory subsystems, memory controller behavior, and IO subsystems (PCIe, CXL).
• Experience profiling and debugging in Linux and bare-metal environments, including kernel-level tracing (perf, ftrace, PMU).
• Proficiency in C/C++ and Python for tooling, automation, and data analysis.
• Excellent cross-functional communication and presentation skills.

Nice-to-have:

• Experience with performance modeling methodologies such as SystemC/TLM.

Education Requirements

Not specified.

About the Company

Company: Arm

Headquarters: Cambridge, United Kingdom

ARM is a global leader in semiconductor and software design, driving innovation in computing technology. The company specializes in designing processors and systems that provide the essential building blocks for electronic devices. ARM's architecture is widely used in smartphones, servers, and IoT devices, and its collaborative culture fosters bold thinking, diversity, and high-impact benefits for its talented workforce.