Senior Director - System Architecture

This role will be on-site 5 days a week in NW Austin.

Scope

The Sr Director of System Architecture will be responsible as the lead architect for developing next-generation ultra-low-power AI-based SoC architectures for future Ambiq products. The candidate will own the development and coordination of new product architectures with the Marketing Advanced Development and Engineering teams. This position will report directly to the VP of Architecture. Areas of interest include: low-power embedded microprocessor and microcontroller-based System on Chip (SoC) interconnect technologies memory technologies and topologies clocking power management as well as preferred familiarity with 2D and 3D graphics accelerators and display controller technologies video and image processing and Neural Network processors/accelerators/NPUs. The candidate will have sufficient experience with system-level design hardware/software partitioning power and performance modeling/tradeoffs.

Expectations for a successful candidate are as follows:

• Work with Ambiq’s Marketing Advanced Development architecture and engineering teams to drive development of new ultra-low power AI System on Chip (SoC) architectures on Ambiq Micro’s technology and product roadmaps
• Develop high-level specifications and drive power/performance modeling and analysis
• Analyze low power interconnect memory and hardware accelerator technologies and applications to identify opportunities for extending Ambiq’s low power leadership
• Support definition of Ambiq’s technology roadmap including external and internal IP assessment definition and integration
• Work with the engineering teams to transition architecture specification into Ambiq Micro’s products
• Work with systems solutions and software teams to ensure robust interfaces and support key product use cases
• Support post-silicon analysis and efficient delivery of Ambiq products to customers for mass production

Specific Responsibilities

As the Sr Director of System Architecture at Ambiq you will lead architecture definition of various Ambiq low power AI SoC’s from initial concept to mass production.

This is a critical functional at Ambiq to support delivering the world’s lowest power electronic devices to enable ubiquitous AI at the edge. This is a cross-functional position working with software and hardware engineering teams applications engineering and field teams to ensure alignment to product requirements logical and physical design constraints power and performance targets and overall system architecture. This role will encompass high level architecture specification low level microarchitecture process node dependent analysis power/performance modeling analysis and use case definition.

• Architecture specifications including flow diagrams/sequences power/performance models and pseudocode
• Customer interaction as needed to ensure alignment on key features and competitive product positioning
• Microarchitecture specifications (as applicable) and support to enable software and hardware design
• Support for use case and test case development
• Integration specifications to support system interfaces and external power management requirements/interfaces
• Work with FPGA team to bringup critical SoC features
• Work with software architecture to define flows APIs and hardware abstraction layers
• Work with physical design team to ensure robust/optimal implementation
• Work with design team to debug issues using RTL and gate level simulation

Education and Experience:

The candidate should be comfortable with independent specification analysis and development from high level concepts through design and validation as well as collaborative development with software and hardware engineering.  A deep knowledge of embedded systems and microprocessor/microcontroller based AI System on Chip (SoC) specifically targeting wearable IoT and mobile systems is critical along with specific experience delivering low power architectures to market. A working knowledge of SoC architecture fabric/interconnect technologies power management and advanced process nodes is required. Additionally experience with wireless technologies and SoCs specifically Bluetooth WiFi NFC and GPS is preferred. The candidate should be comfortable with full system dataflows and modeling to guide hardware and software analysis and development.

Specific Experience

• Minimum of 15 years of microprocessor/microcontroller based System on Chip or similar architecture and design experience targeting wearable/IoT and mobile products
• Experience developing novel low power architectures from idea to specification to design to post-silicon validation
• Working knowledge of low power modern mobile consumer electronic systems required
• Experience in advanced process node technologies highly desirable
• BS in Electrical Engineering Computer Engineering or Computer Science (must have)
• MS or PhD (strongly preferred)
• Individual contributor role but strong technical and team leadership experience is desired.
• Must have experience creating architectural specifications for System-on-Chip or similar complex hardware devices
• Must communicate well (verbal and written)

**Must be currently authorized to work in the United States for any employer. We do not sponsor or take over sponsorship of employment visas (now or in the future) for this role.

What We Do

Ambiq makes unprecedented energy-efficient SoCs and ultra-low power platform solutions that enable edge AI on billions of battery-powered devices. Our mission is to put intelligence everywhere by delivering the lowest-power semiconductor solutions on the planet. With SPOT® technology and the Apollo SoC family Ambiq empowers innovators to build smarter longer-lasting wearables IoT smart home healthcare and industrial devices.Ambiq has helped leading manufacturers worldwide develop products that last weeks on a single charge (rather than days) while delivering a maximum feature set in compact industrial designs. Ambiq's goal is to take Artificial Intelligence (AI) where it has never gone before in mobile and portable devices using Ambiq's advanced ultra-low power system on chip (SoC) solutions. Ambiq has shipped more than 200 million units as of March 2023. The next generation of AI will not depend on constant cloud connectivity.It will run directly on ultra-low-power silicon in wearables sensors and embedded systems.At Ambiq we design and ship production silicon that enables:Real-time inference on constrained devicesModels optimized to run in tens of KBExtreme power efficiency for battery-operated systemsDeep hardware/software co-designThis is not research. It’s deployed technology.

Why Work With Us

Direct influence on silicon architectureSmaller high-impact teamsHardware/software co-design in real timeFaster technical decision cyclesVisible ownership at Staff & Director levelAustin-based collaboration culture