Senior Performance Engineer (RISC-V, AI & HPC)
Location: Limerick, Ireland (Hybrid / Flexible)
Employment Type: Permanent, Full-time
Company Type: High-growth deep-tech startup
Role Overview
A fast-growing deep-tech startup based in Limerick is seeking a Senior / Principal Performance Engineer to work on next-generation RISC-V silicon. This role focuses on optimising AI, HPC, and system-level workloads across both pre-silicon and silicon environments.
This is a highly technical, hands-on position, ideal for engineers who enjoy working close to the hardware and collaborating across software, firmware, compiler, and hardware teams.
Key Responsibilities
Technical Contributions
Optimise AI, HPC, and system workloads for custom RISC-V architectures, including vector extensions
Characterise workloads, identify performance bottlenecks, and drive implementation of solutions
Analyse application behaviour across the full system stack (CPU, memory, storage, power)
Profile and optimise software on pre-silicon platforms (simulators, emulators, FPGAs) and on real silicon
Perform root-cause analysis and resolve complex performance issues
Optimise HPC and AI libraries, runtimes, and benchmarks
Contribute to operating-system-level instrumentation for performance and power
Integrate performance benchmarking into CI/CD pipelines
Present findings to senior technical stakeholders and, where appropriate, at industry conferences
Contribute to upstream open-source projects
Collaboration & Influence
Work closely with hardware teams, influencing hardware/software co-design decisions
Collaborate with compiler, firmware, OS, AI stack, and middleware teams
Participate in code reviews, design discussions, and bug triaging
Contribute to shared team responsibilities such as documentation, CI issue triage, and technical rotations
Required Qualifications & Experience
Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field
3–5+ years' experience in performance engineering, systems engineering, HPC, or low-level software development
Strong understanding of computer architecture (CPU, cache, memory hierarchy, interconnects)
Proven experience with performance optimisation and profiling
Strong programming skills in C/C++ (Rust is a plus)
Experience working with assembly language (any architecture)
Solid understanding of Linux, operating systems, and system-level software
Strong analytical and problem-solving skills
Desirable / Nice-to-Have Experience
RISC-V development, particularly at the assembly level
AI or HPC performance optimisation
Familiarity with performance tools (Linux perf, VTune, flamegraphs, lmbench, sysbench, etc.)
Experience with HPC and AI benchmarks (SPEC CPU, Linpack, MLPerf, Graph, etc.)
Experience with simulators and emulators (QEMU, Gem5, Spike)
Bare-metal or embedded systems development
Fortran and/or statistical analysis
Containerised environments (Docker, Kubernetes)
Hypervisors (KVM, Xen)
Open-source software development
Soft Skills & Mindset
Strong team player with excellent communication skills
Curious and motivated to learn new technologies and architectures
Comfortable collaborating across teams and disciplines
Proactive, self-driven, and solution-focused
Thrives in a fast-paced startup environment