PhD Position – Ultra-Low-Power AI Accelerators for Resource-Constrained Devices (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 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):

• Design of ultra-low-power AI accelerators for microcontrollers and edge devices
• Energy-efficient neural network architectures and training methods
• Hardware-aware model compression and quantization
• Integration of AI accelerators into real-world embedded systems

🧠 Your Profile:

• Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, or related field
• Passion for energy-efficient computing and embedded AI
• Knowledge of digital design or SoC power modeling and optimization
• Experience with ML frameworks and embedded programming (e.g., C/C++, Python) is a plus

If you’re passionate about efficient 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...