PhD Position – Heterogeneous Domain-Specific Accelerators for Physical AI (f/m/d)

Join a vibrant, international R&D team at NXP Semiconductors, where academic excellence meets real-world impact. Our team includes several engineers holding a PhD and an independent university lecturer, all working at the forefront of AI Processor Architecture for edge applications. In this role, your research will contribute both to academic advancement and to the development of technologies that power billions of AI-enabled edge devices. At NXP, you’ll collaborate closely with fellow PhD students, as well as Technical Directors and Fellows—our technological thought leaders. You will be co-supervised by a professor from a well-established European (typically German) university, alongside your industrial supervisor, who also holds a university lectureship and brings both academic insight and practical experience to your research journey. You will have the opportunity to work with real silicon and state-of-the-art industrial software stacks for machine learning. The environment actively supports publications, conference travel, and academic exchange.

🔍 Research Focus (flexible within scope):

• Heterogeneous accelerator architectures for robotics, ADAS (e.g., radar, lidar), and industrial AI
• Co-design of hardware and low-level software for real-time, safety-critical systems
• Domain-specific compiler and runtime support for physical AI workloads
• Integration of sensor fusion and perception algorithms into custom accelerators

🧠 Your Profile:

• Master’s degree in Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or related field
• Interest in real-time systems, embedded AI, and heterogeneous computing
• Experience with hardware design
• Familiarity with AI workloads in physical systems or embedded systems is a plus

If you’re passionate about AI hardware and want your research to reach millions of users in actual products, this is your chance to make that impact while earning a PhD.

More information about NXP in Germany...