Director Software Engineering Media Performance jobs at Arm in United Kingdom, Cambridge

By joining the team, you will interact closely with world-wide CPU RTL designers and implementation teams to investigate and evaluate new micro-architectural ideas and design trade-offs that will make the micro-architecture for the next products successful for the target sectors. You will evaluate these ideas and analyse CPU performance and power developing and using C++ based models of the micro-architecture. You will also coach and mentor more junior engineers to help them grow and become deep experts on the field.

The key objectives of this role include:

• Help driving the technical direction of the team, which develops, tests and maintains software models of Arm's advance CPUs.
• Engage with hardware design engineers to prune the design space of next generation products, understanding power and performance opportunities on current processors and investigate potential micro-architectural improvements.
• Support the mentorship and coaching of other specialists; sharing your technical expertise and experience.
• With your help, we will keep improving the effectiveness of Arm modelling methodologies.
• Our team collaborates with performance, design and implementation engineers across the world. You would be involved on the communication and alignment of activities related to integration, methodologies, strategies, etc.

• Good interpersonal skills and capacity to work efficiently with local and remote teams.
• Detailed understanding of CPU micro-architecture.
• Experience of performance modelling.
• Experience of exploring and evaluating ideas and performance related to processor micro-architecture.
• Proven experience in C++.

• Team leadership, including planning and managing tasks, as well as delivery to specification and schedule.
• Strong software development experience, including design specification, coding, testing, and debugging.
• Experience with RTL and SystemC simulators.
• Experience with power models.
• Familiarity with Arm architectures and instruction sets.
• Knowledge of System Architecture and System Software including OS kernel internals.
• Experience of Unix development environment.
• University degree, ideally in electronic engineering or computer science, although other graduates would be considered if they have meaningful experience.

You will get to utilise your engineering skills to build support for technologies and influence millions of devices for years to come. You’ll share ideas with and learn new skills from some of the best engineers in the world!

• Being a member of the core arm64 Linux Kernel team responsible for maintaining the upstream Linux port and user space tools
• Review code on public mailing list and upstream code to various Linux subsystems including perf
• Actively work on improving performance and security of upstream Linux Kernel on modern arm64 hardware
• Support our kernel maintainers by helping reduce technical debt and review burden of various subsystems
• Do investigations of new architecture features and how they can used by Linux
• Upstream support for new architecture features

• Proficient C programmer
• Desire and ability to work as part of a team and the Linux community
• Strong understanding of operating system fundamentals
• Credible experience of developing sophisticated low level software

• Armv8-A Architecture
• Arm64 assembly language
• Proficient in Linux Memory Management and Virtualisation
• Credible experience of working in the Linux upstream

Develop in depth understanding of ML workload, develop algorithms and optimization techniques to drive PPA (Performance, Power, Area) on current and future Arm platforms.

1. Implementation of performance critical machines specific kernel or ARM assembly code on dedicated hardware accelerator and CPU to drive algorithm and architecture exploration
2. Collaborate with ML Algorithm development team to explore performance critical analysis
3. Develop internal tooling capabilities to support algorithmic and architecture exploration

• Develop performance critical assembly code to accelerate ML operations done in low precision arithmetic
• Develop performance critical kernel to accelerate fusing of multiple ML operations on accelerators
• Explore different quantization schemes and assess performance PPA trade off

• 3+ years experience in developing performance critical kernel on dedicated accelerator, GPU or CPU
• Graduate students in Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science or other related technical fields
• Deep knowledge in machine learning, deep learning, and neural network design, optimization, and compression techniques
• Overall high-level knowledge of computer architecture, systems, and HW-SW co-design
• Ability to develop and work with large software systems in programming languages like Python
• Knowledge of cutting-edge deep learning libraries such as Tensorflow, and Pytorch
• Willing to learn and train large deep learning models on GPU-based systems

• Experience with ML model design, optimization, and HW-SW co-development methodology
• ML Model Optimization techniques targeting PPA (Performance, Power, and Area) of neural networks on ARM compute platforms
• Adaptability to the fast-moving ML industry and willingness to learn new technology in a very dynamic environment

Working on interesting new projects with leaders in the field is exciting, but we also know how important it is to receive support. That's why throughout your internship, you can expect regular feedback and development opportunities, social activities to connect with your peers, an end of internship celebration, plus the opportunity to be *considered for future Graduate positions (*subject to performance). #getreadytogrow

In addition to a competitive salary and rewards package, our on-the-job learning and mentoring/buddy schemes provide unparalleled learning and networking opportunities from the best in the industry.

The role of Performance Engineer requires to:

• Utilise pre-silicon platforms for next-gen systems to gain insights into new use cases
• Ensure that IP and system around it delivers powerful AI performance
• Engage with specialists across Arm to understand, explore and challenge the limits of performance capabilities
• Help to influence direction of AI software and IP

• Software development, with very good programming skills, preferably C++ and Python
• Ability to quickly investigate and debug large software frameworks
• A real passion for data analysis
• Curiosity to make positive impact, both in our team, and in the wider Arm ecosystem
• Very good interpersonal, collaboration and communication skills
• A degree, or higher in computational or numerate subject, or experience in a related field

In this role you will focus on analysing and enabling optimal performance and power efficiency for advanced machine learning and compute workloads on next-generation Arm IPs and systems, including emerging architectural features such as the Scalable Matrix Extension (SME). You'll work with pioneering pre-silicon platforms: software models, RTL simulation, emulation, and FPGA environments. These platforms are critical for assessing and validating these next-generation designs. Another core aspect of the role is work on evaluating and tuning neural network execution across frameworks like LiteRT, ONNX Runtime, and the Arm Compute Library (ACL) to fully exploit the capabilities of brand-new Arm hardware to achieve the best performance to power ratio. You will also work on low-level system software and develop advanced debugging skills in a pre-silicon context.

Job Overview:

It would also be desirable if you have experience with media, graphics or imaging flows and driver/middleware stack development.

Responsibilities:

• Design and implement software components that meet functional safety requirements (e.g., ISO 26262, IEC 61508).
• Work to bring function safety to existing code.
• Develop and maintain documentation to support safety certification and compliance audits.
• Collaborate with safety engineers, hardware teams, and software architects to define software safety requirements and architectures.
• Support software integration, verification, and validation processes in safety-critical systems.
• Contribute to process improvements and tooling for safety-focused software development workflows

Required Skills and Experience:

• Strong proficiency in C development, particularly in embedded or system-level programming.
• Well-versed in functional safety principles, including hazard analysis, safety goals, and ASIL decomposition.
• Motivation and ability to work on frontend tasks using JavaScript.
• Hands-on experience with safety standards such as ISO 26262 or IEC 61508.

“Nice To Have” Skills and Experience :

• Experience with safety analysis tools and methods (e.g., FMEA, FMEDA, fault injection).
• Knowledge of MISRA C/C++ or other safety-related coding standards.
• Background in developing software for automotive, aerospace, or industrial control systems.
• Familiarity with safety certification processes and documentation requirements.
• Knowledge of media, imaging or rendering pipelines.

In Return:

As a developer of power-efficient processor technology, Arm is ideally positioned to solve challenges facing a wide variety of markets, including Automotive, IoT, Mobile, and Servers. Effective solutions require a "system" mindset and your innovative ideas will support Central Technology to develop system architectures and influence industry-leading IP that underpin each solution.

This diverse role will largely focus on providing software enablement for our next generation CPU and accelerator based technologies on target use-cases. Typical activities would include application and system analysis, technology research, hands-on software prototyping to understand how software and hardware behaves, experimental investigations, and performance analysis. Recent projects have included technologies related to AI Video Camera, Video encode/decode, and LLM (Large Language Model) applications.

• Application bring-up on/porting to Arm silicon and modelling platforms
• Analyzing software stacks both statically (code structure) and dynamically (runtime performance profiling) to characterize the workloads/algorithms and determine a baseline performance from which to start optimization
• Accelerating algorithms with hand-optimized Arm assembly using the latest Arm technologies such as SVE (Scalable Vector Extensions) and SME (Scalable Matrix Extensions)
• Projecting and measuring gains at the application level
• Evaluating workload sensitivity to micro-architecture features and considering relevant trade-offs, especially related to performance
• Providing suggestions about improvements to the (micro-)architecture & application software
• Developing tools to automate workflow

• Good understanding of computer architecture and embedded systems
• Experience of software development for a commercial organization
• Strong knowledge of C or C++ programming
• Proficiency in problem solving and debugging skills
• Practical, organized and analytical approach to work
• Good oral and written English skills

• Experience with assembly programming
• Knowledge of optimising and profiling software
• Software development and integration on Linux, Android, or similar systems
• Knowledge of scripting languages, including Python

We are looking for an experienced engineer who is passionate about developing compilers and managed runtimes and loves open-source software. In this role you will be working on CPython. You'll be part of the bigger CE-SW Runtimes team, whose goal is to improve modern languages support on the Arm architecture, from JavaScript to Rust. You will work closely with the team and colleagues across the organisation and with open-source communities to solve challenges in enabling the future of computing.

Responsibilities

• Identify and implement changes to compilers and managed runtimes to improve the performance of selected workloads and better support Arm architectural features and CPU designs.
• Implement new runtime or compiler features and fine-tune existing ones. (e.g. garbage collectors, interpreters, optimisation passes, intrinsics).
• Own and be accountable for medium/large technical areas of CPython development.
• Contribute to CPython and related projects; engage with its upstream communities.
• Collaborate with colleagues across Arm to improve the support for the Arm Architecture and CPUs.
• Help develops the project automated functionality and performance testing frameworks.

Required Skills and Experience

• Experience working on managed runtimes or compilers.
• Strong programming skills in Python/C.
• Be flexible, with a variety of software development skills and a commitment to extend the breadth and depth of knowledge.
• Familiar with open-source project development and contribution processes.
• Knowledge of a computer architecture, arm64 is preferred.
• Proficiency in software development and methodologies (coding, testing, debugging, reviewing).
• Clear and effective written and verbal communication skills.

"Nice To Have" Skills and Experience

• Proficiency in one or more of the following languages: Java, Rust, Go, JavaScript.
• Familiar with Agile software development methodology such as Scrum or Kanban.
• Familiar with Linux performance analysis tools and system level performance tuning.

In Return

You’ll work directly with the upstream CPython community, contributing to the core of the language used by millions of developers worldwide. You’ll have the chance to implement real improvements in the interpreter, targeting performance and architectural enhancements specific to Arm, such as NEON and SVE.