Physical AI Architect

About Altera

Altera™ is the world’s largest pure‑play FPGA solutions provider, with more than four decades of industry‑leading FPGA expertise. To innovate without compromise, we empower our teams to drive breakthrough innovation and shape the future of the FPGA industry.

Altera is seeking a PhD-level Engineer/Physical AI Architect to define the next generation of Physical AI platforms for robotics, industrial automation, machine vision, and autonomous systems. The candidate will drive system architecture and workload analysis across heterogeneous compute platforms combining CPUs, DSPs, FPGA fabric, AI accelerators, GPUs, memory subsystems, and high‑speed sensor interfaces. The role will focus on mapping real‑world Physical AI workloads to optimized hardware/software architectures and influencing future Altera product roadmaps, including SoC, FPGA, memory, interconnect, and accelerator roadmaps.

• Define sensor‑to‑actuator Physical AI reference architectures.
• Analyze and partition AI, vision, perception, planning, and control workloads across CPU, DSP, FPGA fabric, GPU, and AI accelerators.
• Drive architecture trade‑offs involving performance, latency, power, memory bandwidth, and determinism.
• Develop workload models, benchmarks, and performance projections for robotics and autonomous systems.
• Collaborate with customers, ecosystem partners, and internal silicon teams to identify future platform requirements.
• Influence next‑generation Altera SoC, FPGA, memory, interconnect, and accelerator roadmaps.

• PhD in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Robotics, or related field.
• 1+ years of experience and research interest in system architecture, embedded computing, AI acceleration, robotics, or heterogeneous computing.
• 1+ years of understanding of CPU, DSP, FPGA, GPU, AI accelerator, memory, and interconnect architectures.
• Experience with AI/ML, computer vision, robotics, or autonomous systems workloads.
• Proven track record of technical leadership, innovation, and architecture definition.

• Experience with ROS2, edge AI, machine vision, autonomous systems, or industrial robotics.
• Knowledge of FPGA‑based acceleration and heterogeneous computing platforms.
• Publications, patents, or recognized contributions in AI, robotics, or computer architecture.

Job Type: Regular

Shift: Shift 1

Primary

Location:

San Jose, California, United States

$133,200 - $190,000 USD (Bay Area, California only)

Applicants must be eligible for any required U.S. export authorizations.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, religious creed, sex, national origin, ancestry, age, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, military and veteran status, marital status, pregnancy, gender, gender expression, gender identity, sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by local law, regulation, or ordinance.