Principal Software Engineer - Simulators

About the job

Acceler8 Talent is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to join an early stage startup backed by a Tier-1 VC that is rethinking AI infrastructure from first principles.

Founded by highly respected industry veterans, they are innovating at the chip and system level to deliver an order of magnitude better performance-per-watt for inference, which would mean a huge economic shift for anyone running large scale models, unlocking larger context windows and longer generations, making new workloads economically viable.

As a Principal Software Engineer - Simulators, you will technically lead the development of performance and/or functional models that guide architecture decisions and accelerate hardware–software co-design in a fast-moving startup environment.

Responsibilities:

 ● Design, implement, and maintain processor simulators (performance and/or functional models)

 ● Model microarchitectural components (pipelines, memory hierarchy, interconnects, accelerators)

 ● Traces generation and curation to make them suitable for the targeted performance analysis goals

 ● Analyze simulation results to inform architecture tradeoffs and optimizations

 ● Collaborate closely with architecture, hardware, and compiler teams

 ● Own critical simulation infrastructure from concept through production use

Experience:

 ● 5+ years of software engineering experience, ideally in systems, architecture, or EDA domains

 ● Strong C/C++ and Python skills with large, complex codebases

 ● Experience with processor simulators, architectural modeling, or performance analysis, especially “from-scratch” simulator development

 ● Solid understanding of computer architecture and microarchitecture

 ● Ability to work independently and make technical decisions in an early startup

Nice to Have:

 ● Experience with AI/ML accelerators, GPUs, or heterogeneous systems

 ● Familiarity with simulators such as gem5, gem5-SALAM, or proprietary modeling tools

 ● Background in HW–SW co-design or compilers

If you're looking for massive ownership, huge impact, and the opportunity to build from the ground up, please apply here or reach out to me at ltomaszko@acceler8talent.com to hear more.