CPU Processor Performance Verification Engineer

Santa Clara Until 9/22/2026 10+ years exp First posted July 24, 2026 Last posted July 24, 2026
Job description

Imagine what you could do here! At Apple, new ideas have a way of becoming extraordinary products, services, and customer experiences very quickly. Bring passion and dedication to your job and there's no telling what you could accomplish. Dynamic, hard-working people and inspiring, innovative technologies are the norm here. The people who work here have reinvented entire industries with all Apple Hardware products. The same passion for innovation that goes into our products also applies to our practices strengthening our commitment to leave the world better than we found it! Join us to help deliver the next groundbreaking Apple product. In this highly visible role, you will be at the center of a chip design effort collaborating with all subject areas, with a critical impact on getting functional products to millions of customers quickly. You will be responsible for silicon performance verification, correlation, characterization and tuning for CPUs. The role involves pre-silicon performance verification as well as developing tests to characterize CPU performance, analyzing and profiling software/applications, correlating and comparing performance across silicon/system software version, and working with OS and compiler teams on performance debug and tuning.

Description

As a CPU Processor Performance Verification Engineer owning the verification of a certain area of performance features in a chip design, you will have responsibilities as follows:

• Work closely with architects and RTL designers on verifying the performance features of the design and correlating with performance models (both pre-silicon and post-silicon)
• Work closely with software and application developers on identifying performance bottlenecks and tuning the software
• Develop test plans and test infrastructure/tools for performance tuning, correlation, and verification
• Improve and maintain the architectural performance models
• Develop tests in assembly, C/C++, or vectors to debug and correlate the RTL and performance model
• Develop C or Verilog-based checkers for verifying the performance features
• Develop coverage monitors and analyze coverage to ensure all performance features are covered
• Debug performance issues and conduct performance tuning on silicon
• Benchmark, correlate and compare CPU performance across silicon/OS/compiler versions
• Present CPU performance results to multi-functional teams
• Work closely with OS and compiler teams on system and application performance tuning

Minimum Qualifications

Minimum BS and 10+ years of relevant industry experience
Performance modeling, processor verification, or RTL design experience
Experience in digital logic design, CPU architecture, and microarchitecture
Experience in developing performance test plans and writing/debugging assembly tests for performance correlation and verification
Programming skills in assembly, C/C++, Verilog, System Verilog, or scripting

Preferred Qualifications

Experience in benchmark and workload analysis and CPU performance profiling
Knowledge of compiler techniques and OS for performance optimization
Knowledge in developing instruction profiling tools on silicon
Experience in performance modeling for advanced CPU designs
Experience in silicon validation
Ability to work across teams to optimize silicon performance
Should be a great teammate with excellent communication and presentation skills and able to work independently on the owned unit

About this role

Summary

Verify and optimize CPU performance through silicon testing, modeling, and collaboration with teams.

Job title

CPU Processor Performance Verification Engineer

Experience level

10+ years

Minimum experience

10+ years exp

Industry

technology

Location requirements

Santa Clara, on-site, no remote work allowed.

Salary

Not specified

Management role

No

Skills & keywords

Required skills

performance modelingprocessor verificationrtl designassemblyc/c++verilogsystem verilogperformance testing

Preferred skills

benchmark analysiscpu profilingcompiler techniquesos optimizationinstruction profilingsilicon validation

Specializations

cpu architectureperformance modelingsilicon validationperformance verification
Locations

Structured locations inferred from the posting.

Santa Clara, CA, USA

On-site City