Job Details:Job Description:Altera is seeking a Senior Software Architect to help build our Physical AI SDK-a developer-facing platform that enables robotics and drones applications to use FPGA acceleration through portable, composable, high-performance APIs.
You will connect frameworks such as NVIDIA Holoscan, ROS 2, Linux, and ONNX Runtime to Altera FPGA platforms. This hands-on role combines software architecture, production development, hardware/software integration, and customer-focused solution delivery.
Responsibilities- As software architect, define and guide SDK architecture, APIs, hardware abstraction, device discovery, lifecycle management, diagnostics, and plugin interfaces.
- Architect high-performance modules for sensor ingestion, camera and video pipelines, ISP, compression, memory and buffer management, synchronization, networking, localization, and AI pre-processing.
- Work with the engineering to integrate FPGA acceleration into Holoscan and ROS 2 workflows, including minimum or zero-copy data paths, DMA, metadata, timestamping, QoS, and deterministic execution.
- Help develop Linux-based C++ libraries, Python bindings, utilities, deployment tools, and take responsibility of documentation, and reference applications.
- Collaborate with FPGA, hardware, AI, systems, and customer teams to validate latency, throughput, resource utilization, and reliability.
- Mentor engineers and provide technical leadership from architecture through release.
The pay range below is for Bay Area California only. Actual salary may vary based on a number of factors including job location, job-related knowledge, skills, experiences, trainings, etc. We also offer incentive opportunities that reward employees based on individual and company performance.
$231.5K - $341.1K USD
Qualifications:Required Qualifications- Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related field, plus 15+ years of relevant experience.
- Strong C++ and Linux systems-development skills, including concurrency, performance optimization, and debugging.
- Experience designing and shipping SDKs, middleware, runtimes, device frameworks, or developer-facing platform software.
- Understanding of heterogeneous data movement across CPU, GPU, FPGA, DMA, shared memory, and high-speed I/O.
- Experience with Holoscan, ROS 2, GStreamer, ffmpeg, OpenCV, or a comparable robotics or real-time framework.
- Experience with hardware-accelerated video, vision, sensor, networking, or signal-processing pipelines.
- Strong communication skills and demonstrated ownership of complex, cross-functional projects.
Preferred Qualifications- Experience with Altera FPGAs, PCIe, Ethernet, MIPI CSI-2/D-PHY, GMSL, FPGA acceleration, or HLS/RTL integration.
- Experience with robotics end-to-end pipeline.
- Familiarity with zero-copy, RDMA, GPUDirect, high-speed Ethernet, embedded Linux, Yocto, containers, and cross-compilation.
- Experience with camera systems, ISP pipelines, video compression, sensor fusion, SLAM, or robotics perception.
- Experience defining SDK roadmaps, compatibility policies, release criteria, and developer documentation.
Travel Requirements: 30%
Job Type: Regular
Shift:Shift 1 (United States of America)
Primary Location:San Jose, California, United States
Additional Locations: 
