Sr. Staff SoC Power & Performance Architect

About the role

Ambiq is looking for a Sr. Staff Power & Performance Architect to help shape the architecture behind some of the industry's most power-efficient SoCs. You will drive power and performance analysis, budgeting, modeling, and debug from early architecture through silicon correlation, while defining practical architecture guidance for power management, clocking/reset, fabric, and embedded system behavior. This role is ideal for a senior low-power SoC architect who enjoys hands-on analysis, silicon debug, architecture specification, automation, and customer-facing technical influence.

Responsibilities

• Execute power and performance analysis across pre-silicon modeling, RTL power analysis, power-aware simulation, and post-silicon correlation.
• Build and maintain SoC, subsystem, and use-case-level power budgets.
• Drive variance analysis against power and performance targets, surfacing risks early.
• Lead architectural debug of power anomalies in simulation, emulation, or silicon.
• Trace issues from waveform to RTL to architectural intent to root cause.
• Develop and automate power modeling infrastructure, reporting flows, regression dashboards, and analysis tooling using Python and/or TCL.
• Characterize power states, transitions, leakage/dynamic splits, Vmin behavior, retention, and corner behavior on first silicon.
• Feed silicon learnings back into next-generation architecture.
• Contribute architecture and microarchitecture specifications for power management, clocking/reset, fabric, flow sequencing, software/hardware interaction, and power models.
• Analyze process-node tradeoffs and translate them into architectural recommendations.
• Support use-case and test-case development.
• Partner with physical design on power domain partitioning and UPF/power intent mapping.
• Work with software architecture teams to define power management flows, APIs, and power manager behavior.
• Support FPGA teams during early bring-up of power management and global flows.
• Translate silicon power/performance capabilities into datasheet guidance, competitive positioning, and customer-facing collateral.
• Support pre-sales, field engineering, RFQ/RFI responses, customer meetings, and customer use-case power estimation as Ambiq's P&P subject-matter expert.

Qualifications

• BS in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field.
• 7+ years of architecture experience in low-power SoC, embedded SoC, semiconductor, MCU, processor, or related silicon environments.
• Hands-on ownership of power and/or performance analysis, budgeting, and debug.
• Experience with Cadence Genus or equivalent industry power analysis tooling.
• Experience with power-aware simulation flows.
• Strong Python and/or TCL scripting for modeling, automation, reporting, and analysis.
• Demonstrated ability to write architecture and microarchitecture specifications that engineering teams can build from.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to work effectively across hardware, software, physical design, validation, applications, field, marketing, and sales teams.
• Experience with collaboration tools such as Confluence, SharePoint, JIRA, and Git.

Preferred Qualifications

• MS or PhD in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field.
• 10+ years of semiconductor or embedded SoC industry experience.
• UPF / IEEE 1801 authoring or review experience.
• Clocking/reset architecture experience.
• Arm Cortex-M architecture experience.
• Experience with Arm Cortex-A, RISC-V, DSP, or heterogeneous multicore architectures.
• Experience with APB, AHB, AXI, NoC, cache, pseudo-SRAM, DRAM, non-volatile memory, or high-bandwidth memory topologies.
• Prior customer-facing, pre-sales, field, or applications engineering engagement.
• Familiarity with AI-assisted engineering environments such as Claude Code, Cursor, or equivalent.

This role will be on-site 5 days a week in NW Austin. Must be currently authorized to work in the United States for any employer.