System Software Architect, AI Hardware and Software Performance
NVIDIA is hiring a System Software Architect, AI Hardware and Software Performance in Shanghai, China. Level rates it ; you can apply on NVIDIA.
Level's read on this job
- Level rates this role Works on AI ●●●○: the daily work is on AI products, without building the model.
- Tools and skills the posting cites include vLLM, PyTorch and JAX.
- Level classifies it as a senior role.
- Level lists 2,700+ other open roles at NVIDIA.
- The role was posted within the past week.
AI in this role
Define technical architecture and infrastructure for AI and HPC performance benchmarking and validation platforms.
NVIDIA's Performance Lab (PerfLab) builds the automation platforms that evaluate the performance and quality of accelerated computing workloads efficiently and accurately, from single nodes to large training and inference clusters. Our platforms turn complex benchmark campaigns into reliable, scalable, and reproducible workflows, enabling engineering, product, and marketing teams to make data-driven decisions.
We are looking for a System Software Architect to set the technical direction for these platforms. You will build platform components and lead projects from problem discovery and technical design through production deployment and adoption. This hands-on role combines architecture, cross-team alignment, and direct system debugging. You will collaborate with NVIDIA teams around the world and help shape how NVIDIA measures, understands, and improves performance for large language models, agentic AI, and emerging HPC and AI workloads.
What You'll Be Doing:
- Define the technical direction and architecture for major areas of PerfLab's benchmark infrastructure, translating evolving business and engineering needs into clear roadmaps and scalable platform capabilities.
- Lead the implementation of reusable software, services, and workflows that automate benchmark definition, execution, result collection, validation, and reporting across local, cluster, and cloud-native environments.
- Establish engineering approaches that improve the reliability, scalability, observability, maintainability, and reproducibility of large benchmark campaigns.
- Stay hands-on with AI benchmarking, analysis, and benchmark design, and use that first-hand knowledge of how real workflows behave to ground platform investments and technical decisions.
- Lead delivery across team boundaries: align partner teams on direction, eliminate duplicated efforts, manage delivery risk, and keep stakeholders informed.
- Raise the engineering bar through architecture and code reviews, technical standards, and mentoring, while evaluating emerging technologies.
- Contribute to the strategy and development of internal and open-source projects, and grow their adoption.
What We Need to See:
- M.Sc. or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering from a leading university (or equivalent experience).
- 10+ years of hands-on experience in developing system software, distributed systems, or AI systems.
- Strong Python and software engineering expertise, with a track record of building and operating production-quality tools, services, or automation frameworks.
- Proven technical leadership on sophisticated, multi-functional projects, including defining architecture, managing technical risk, resolving ambiguity, and driving solutions through delivery and adoption.
- Experience in quantitative analysis of AI hardware and systems, including hardware and system performance, architecture evaluation and power efficiency.
- Experience in operating distributed or cloud-native systems at scale, including performance profiling, capacity analysis, or resource scheduling.
- Excellent communication, influence, presentation, and cross-functional coordination skills, with experience aligning teams across countries and time zones to drive decisions.
- A record of mentoring engineers, raising engineering quality, and helping teams make better technical decisions.
Ways to Stand Out From the Crowd:
- Good technical understanding of modern compute hardware at one or more levels of the stack, including silicon, systems, networking, or clusters.
- Working knowledge of how AI workloads stress hardware, including memory bandwidth, memory capacity, interconnect communication, and real-world compute utilization.
- Practical experience building custom agent harnesses or strategies that improve workflows at team or organizational scale.
- Hands-on experience with AI training or inference frameworks such as vLLM, SGLang, TensorRT-LLM, PyTorch, or JAX.
- Demonstrated success turning loosely defined, cross-organizational problems into durable platforms or programs with measurable engineering impact.
We have some of the most forward-thinking and hardworking people in the world working for us. If you are creative, autonomous, and passionate about providing technical leadership while remaining hands-on in building systems that make complex AI performance work repeatable and scalable, we want to hear from you.
How we rate this
System Software Architect, AI Hardware and Software Performance at NVIDIA rates 65 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Works on AI (AI Level 3 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.
Works on AI. The daily work is on AI products, without building the model.
- ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
- ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
- ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
- ●○○○ Little AI0 to 39
Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.
Prepare for this job
Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.
Skills and AI tools this role asks for
Questions you could be asked
- Tell me about a project where system architecture was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where distributed systems was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where ai benchmarking was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where performance engineering was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where cloud native was part of your work. What did you do?
Adapt your resume
- List these exact terms on your resume: System Architecture, Distributed Systems, AI Benchmarking, Performance Engineering, and Cloud Native. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
- Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
- Show where AI is part of your daily process, not a one-off project. This role expects it to be a running habit.
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