Principal Software Engineer

Job title: Principal Software Engineer

Location: Phoenix, AZ (hybrid)

Pay rate: $75-$120/hour

PLEASE READ BEFORE APPLYING

This position supports U.S. export-controlled aerospace programs.

To be eligible, you MUST be either a:

• U.S. Citizen
• U.S. Permanent Resident (Green Card holder)
• Refugee
• Asylee

Candidates working under F-1, CPT, OPT, STEM OPT, H-1B, TN, L-1, O-1, E-3, H-4 EAD, or other temporary visa classifications are NOT eligible and cannot be considered.

HIGHLY DESIRED EXPERIENCE:

Candidates with direct experience supporting AC 20-193 compliance and certification efforts are strongly encouraged to apply.

We are seeking a Principal Software Engineer to lead performance analysis, monitoring, and optimization initiatives for advanced System-on-Chip (SoC) platforms supporting next-generation aerospace and embedded computing applications.

This role is ideal for a highly experienced engineer with deep expertise in SoC performance characterization, cache analysis, memory hierarchy optimization, and platform-level performance monitoring. The successful candidate will help develop tools, processes, and methodologies used to analyze performance across complex multi-core processor architectures.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and develop software tools to monitor and analyze SoC performance.
• Evaluate processor utilization, memory subsystem performance, and communication fabric efficiency.
• Analyze traffic patterns, throughput, latency, congestion, and contention across on-chip networks and interconnects.
• Characterize and establish performance limits for:
• Bandwidth allocation
• Quality of Service (QoS)
• Channel prioritization
• Cache utilization
• Memory access patterns
• Develop performance metrics, benchmarks, and monitoring frameworks.
• Collaborate with hardware, firmware, and systems engineering teams to optimize overall platform performance.
• Support architecture decisions through detailed performance analysis and data-driven recommendations.
• Contribute to certification and compliance activities for safety-critical systems.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical discipline.
• 15+ years of software engineering experience, including significant experience in embedded and performance-critical environments.
• 10+ years of hands-on experience performing SoC performance analysis and monitoring.

• Strong understanding of:

  • Processor architectures
  • Memory hierarchy
  • Cache subsystems
  • High-performance embedded computing
  • Experience analyzing and monitoring:
  • L2/L3 cache behavior
  • Throughput and latency
  • Memory contention
  • Network-on-Chip (NoC) or communication fabric performance
  • Experience developing performance-monitoring tools, frameworks, or automation solutions.

  
  

  Preferred Qualifications

  • Experience with Intel Tiger Lake, Ice Lake, Alder Lake, or related Intel processor architectures.
  • Expertise in performance characterization and system-level optimization.
  • Experience defining and validating QoS policies, bandwidth allocation strategies, and channel prioritization schemes.
  • Background supporting safety-critical or regulated industries such as aerospace, defense, avionics, automotive, or industrial systems.
  • Experience supporting or leading DO-178C / AC 20-193 certification-related activities.

  
  

  Why Apply?

  This is an opportunity to serve as a technical leader influencing the performance architecture of advanced computing platforms. You'll work alongside multidisciplinary engineering teams to solve complex challenges involving processor performance, system optimization, and next-generation embedded technologies.