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 Role:

As a Software Performance Engineer, you will sit at the intersection of cutting-edge silicon design and massive-scale cloud computing. Your mission is to bridge the gap between software behavior and hardware architecture to prove the viability of our RISC-V IP for the world's most demanding workloads.

By systematically analyzing how distributed, containerized applications interact with our cores, you will identify critical performance bottlenecks and drive improvements across the entire stack. Whether optimizing software implementations, refining microarchitecture, or proposing ISA extensions, your insights will directly shape the efficiency and performance of next-generation RISC-V datacenters.

Responsibilities:

• Profile and analyze core hyperscale workloads to pinpoint inefficiencies in CPU utilization, memory hierarchy, I/O throughput, and network interactions within distributed and containerized environments.

• Identify and implement code-level optimizations, library enhancements, or compiler adjustments to ensure the software stack runs efficiently on RISC-V IP.

• Provide data-driven insights to hardware teams to help refine microarchitecture and ISA extensions based on real-world software behavior.

• Ensure that performance gains scale effectively across large-scale cloud deployments and multi-core configurations.

Requirements:

• Strong experience in systematic performance analysis and profiling of large-scale distributed systems or cloud-native applications (e.g., microservices, databases).

• Experienced with standard performance tools such as perf, eBPF, or similar Linux profiling utilities.

• Advanced proficiency in C/C++ and a deep understanding of Linux kernel internals and OS-level resource management (CPU, I/O, Network).

• Proven ability to trace performance bottlenecks across the entire stack, from high-level application code down to the hardware-software interface.

Good understanding of modern CPU microarchitecture, including branch prediction, cache hierarchies, memory consistency, and pipelining.

If you want to do incredible work and be challenged by exciting, truly innovative projects that will test the boundaries of your skills and creativity, then SiFive is the place for you! Be proud of your work. Do things better. Join SiFive.

Additional Information:

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

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.