Principal Architect

About SiFive

As the pioneers who introduced RISC-V to the world, SiFive is transforming the future of compute by bringing the limitless potential of RISC-V to the highest performance and most data-intensive applications in the world. SiFive’s unrivaled compute platforms are continuing to enable leading technology companies around the world to innovate, optimize and deliver the most advanced solutions of tomorrow across every market segment of chip design, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, automotive, data center, mobile, and consumer. With SiFive, the future of RISC-V has no limits.

At SiFive, we are always excited to connect with talented individuals, who are just as passionate about driving innovation and changing the world as we are.

Our constant innovation and ongoing success is down to our amazing teams of incredibly talented people, who collaborate and support each other to come up with truly groundbreaking ideas and solutions. Solutions that will have a huge impact on people's lives; making the world a better place, one processor at a time. 

Are you ready?

To learn more about SiFive’s phenomenal success and to see why we have won the GSA’s prestigious Most Respected Private Company Award (for the fourth time!), check out our website and Glassdoor pages.

Job Description:

The Performance Series Product (PSP) architect will be especially vital to SiFive’s effort to create silicon at the speed of software for our Performance Series IP. The SiFive Performance™ family gives our customers the ultimate freedom to configure a processor that best fits the power, area and performance for their specific market requirements, ranging from the most area efficient application processors to fully featured, superscalar, Linux capable designs, with all of the design points in between. The PSP architect will also serve as an SoC architect to create new, highly configurable SoCs designs, based on the open-source RISC-V ISA, for SiFive’s Performance Series clients.

In developing this collateral, the PSP architect will have the opportunity to trailblaze the use of a novel set of electronic design automation (EDA) tools, which will draw on modern compiling technology and other innovations to create SiFive’s SoC and core library. The PSP architect will create new, highly configurable SoC designs for exciting new use cases—like autonomous driving, 5G networking, wearables, or IoT. At SiFive, the PSP architect will have a chance to design chips more quickly and for more devices than would be technologically possible at any other company, because SiFive is reducing the time needed for chip design and verification down from months to weeks. 

What you will do:

Design Essential Series SoC architecture: 

• The PSP architect will be responsible for creating scalable chip architectures to integrate components in a given customizable chip; each chip will be further customized to be able to incorporate different types of SoC IP. 
• The PSP architect will be responsible for integrating all of the components in a given customizable chip; each chip will be further customized to be able to incorporate different types of SoC IP
• The PSP architect will have a key role in developing the upcoming multicore platform, which will connect numerous cores together on a chip, support large bandwidth, as well as new applications and workloads

Research and analyze emerging needs for new PSP architecture

• The PSP architect will have a chance to analyze market verticals and design SoCs specifically tailored for upcoming use cases.

Interface with customers to tailor SoCs to their needs

• The PSP architect will have a chance to work directly with customers (which include Fortune 500 companies as well as prominent, innovative startups) to brainstorm and troubleshoot SoC designs

What You Should Know:

• 8+ years experience in development and chip architecture definition
• Familiar with advanced CPU architectures and pipelines
• Has experience in SoC design flow, including spec definition, microarchitecture design, and performance modeling.
• You should be familiar with the basics of interconnection network design, including deadlock and livelock avoidance.
• You should be familiar with AXI/AMBA protocols
• You should be familiar with SoC components, such as PCIe, DDR, peripherals, interrupt architectures, IOMMUs, and other related IPs.
• You should be familiar with memory coherence, consistency, and ordering
• Basic understanding of RTL design & SoC tool flows;
• Basic understanding of foundry lib, IP, and process technology limitation
• Basic understanding of RTOSes and Linux OSes.

Pay & Benefits

Consistent with SiFive values and applicable law, we provide the following information to promote pay transparency and equity. We have a market-based pay structure which varies by location. Please note that the base pay range is a guideline, and our compensation range reflects the cost of labor in the U.S. geographic market based on the location of the role. Pay within these ranges varies and depends on job-related knowledge, skills, and relevant work experience. 

For candidates who receive and offer, the starting salary will vary based on various factors including, but not limited to, such qualifications as, skill level, competencies, and work location. The range provided may represent a candidate range and may not reflect the full range for an individual tenured employee.

Base Pay Range

$217,800.00-$266,200.00

In addition to base pay, this role may be eligible for variable/ incentive compensation and/ or equity. In addition, this role is eligible for a comprehensive, competitive benefits package which may include healthcare and retirement plans, paid time off, and more! 

Additional Information:

This position requires a successful background and reference checks and satisfactory proof of your right to work in

United States of America

Any offer of employment for this position is also contingent on the Company verifying that you are a authorized for access to export-controlled technology under applicable export control laws or, if you are not already authorized, our ability to successfully obtain any necessary export license(s) or other approvals.

SiFive is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.

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