Staff Software Development Engineer - Rust, Compilers, and GPU Systems

ADVANCE YOUR CAREER. ADVANCE THE WORLD.

At AMD, we believe technology can change lives for the better. It can heal us, entertain us, and make us more connected, productive, and understanding of the world around us. And we're looking for talent who feel the same: people who want to leave the planet better than they found it, those who don't shy away from humanity's challenges but are determined to help solve them.

AMD is powering the next generation of supercomputing, high-performance computing, cloud, and AI. Whether you're designing next-gen processors, enabling AI breakthroughs, or creating go-to-market plans, every role at AMD contributes to something bigger - technology that moves the world forward.

The Role:

We are building next-generation systems software for AMD GPUs with Rust as a

core technical direction. The work spans compilers, runtimes, low-level GPU

software, firmware, developer tooling, and methods for improving the safety and

correctness of complex hardware-software systems.

Rust is not incidental to this role. You will help establish how Rust is used

in performance-sensitive and high-trust parts of the GPU stack, including the

compiler and tooling support, system interfaces, engineering practices, and

validation methods required for production deployment. You will have the

opportunity to influence both near-term implementations and the longer-term

architecture for using Rust across current and future AMD platforms.

The Person:

This role is for a deeply technical compiler and systems generalist who enjoys

working across abstraction layers. You may move between Rust source semantics,

rustc internals, intermediate representations, MLIR and LLVM, target-specific

code generation, object formats, runtimes, GPU ISA, firmware, and hardware

interfaces.

You should have strong judgment about correctness boundaries. Memory safety is

important, but production correctness also depends on concurrency, ordering,

ABI compatibility, device behavior, compiler transformations, and the

assumptions between software and hardware. You will help make those assumptions

explicit and build evidence that the resulting systems behave as intended.

The ideal candidate has deep expertise in at least one part of this stack and

the ability to become productive in unfamiliar areas. Experience with every

technology listed below is not expected. A research background is not

required, although the ability to read technical work, form testable

hypotheses, and turn promising ideas into reliable implementations is valuable.

The work sits at the intersection of Rust systems programming, production

compiler infrastructure, GPU architecture, firmware, program analysis, and

formal methods. Hardware-software co-design experience is highly valuable,

especially when compiler, runtime, firmware, or ISA choices must evolve

together.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead the design and implementation of production-quality Rust components for

low-level and performance-sensitive GPU systems.

• Help make Rust a first-class engineering language across relevant parts of

the GPU software stack, including toolchain integration, libraries, coding

standards, diagnostics, testing, and deployment practices.

• Design and implement compiler pipelines involving rustc, MIR, target-neutral

intermediate representations, MLIR dialects and transformations, LLVM IR,

and AMDGPU code generation.

• Build analyses, transformations, legalization passes, and target-specific

lowering for GPU execution models, memory spaces, synchronization,

capabilities, and specialized hardware operations.

• Define typed and auditable interfaces across compiler, host runtime, device

code, firmware, and hardware boundaries.

• Work on ABI definition and validation, argument layout, calling conventions,

linker and loader behavior, ELF and code-object metadata, and source-to-binary

identity.

• Develop or improve bare-metal and no_std Rust components where explicit

state, bounded behavior, fail-closed handling, and predictable hardware

effects are required.

• Use testing, fuzzing, property-based testing, differential execution,

executable models, and hardware validation to find semantic gaps and prevent

regressions.

• Apply program analysis or formal methods where they provide meaningful

assurance, including source-level invariants, state-machine properties,

refinement obligations, and clearly documented trusted boundaries.

• Distinguish precisely among type-system guarantees, source-level proofs,

compiler evidence, binary validation, simulator results, and behavior

observed on hardware.

• Partner with compiler, runtime, firmware, architecture, validation, security,

and performance teams to solve problems that cross organizational and

technical boundaries.

• Write design documents, lead technical reviews, mentor engineers, and explain

complex language, compiler, and hardware behavior clearly.

• Evaluate emerging compiler and verification technologies and integrate them

when they improve the safety, performance, maintainability, or development

velocity of production systems.

Preferred Experience:

• Strong production Rust experience, including ownership and borrowing,

lifetimes, traits and generics, error handling, concurrency, FFI, and the

careful design of safe abstractions over unsafe operations.

• Experience with low-level or constrained Rust, including no_std, embedded

systems, firmware, custom targets, allocators, volatile access, interrupt

handling, or architecture-specific code.

• Strong C or C++ systems programming skills and the ability to work across

mixed-language codebases.

• Experience with rustc internals, MIR, custom codegen backends, procedural

macros, compiler plugins, or other Rust toolchain infrastructure.

• Experience with LLVM, MLIR, GCC, or another production compiler framework.
• Experience designing intermediate representations, dialects, analyses,

optimization passes, legalization, instruction selection, scheduling, or

target-specific code generation.

• Understanding of compiler correctness issues such as undefined behavior,

aliasing, provenance, layout, calling conventions, memory models, and

source-to-target semantic preservation.

• Ability to read and reason about low-level assembly, ISA encodings, compiler

output, and machine-level execution.

• Experience with linkers, loaders, ELF or other object formats, code-object

metadata, DWARF, LLVM MC, disassembly, post-link analysis, or binary rewriting.

• Understanding of GPU execution models, including waves or warps, SIMD/SIMT

execution, address spaces, registers, local or shared memory, caches,

synchronization, atomics, barriers, and asynchronous operations.

• AMDGPU, GCN, RDNA, CDNA, ROCm, HIP, HSA, or AMDGPU LLVM backend experience.
• Experience with GPU runtimes, drivers, firmware, embedded processors, device

initialization, command processing, queueing, or hardware control paths.

• Experience building secure or high-assurance systems that process untrusted

inputs or operate across privilege, memory-isolation, or hardware trust

boundaries.

• Experience with program analysis, abstract interpretation, symbolic

execution, model checking, SMT solvers, or formal verification tools such as

Verus, Lean, Coq, Isabelle, Dafny, or TLA+.

• Experience writing executable specifications, proving state-machine

invariants, or validating refinement between source, IR, binaries,

simulators, RTL, and hardware.

• Strong validation instincts, including adversarial testing, differential

testing, property-based testing, fuzzing, reproducible evidence, and careful

treatment of assumptions and counterexamples.

• Hardware-software co-design experience for ISA features, compiler-visible

architecture, memory systems, synchronization, security mechanisms, or

specialized compute pipelines.

• Technical leadership experience: setting direction, resolving ambiguous

cross-layer problems, influencing partner teams, mentoring engineers, and

communicating tradeoffs clearly.

Preferred Academic Credentials:

Bachelor's, Master's, or PhD in Computer Science, Computer Engineering,

Electrical Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent industry experience.

Research publications and advanced degrees are welcome but are not required.

LOCATION:

San Jose, California

#LI-G11

#LI-HYBRID

Benefits offered are described: AMD benefits at a glance.

AMD does not accept unsolicited resumes from headhunters, recruitment agencies, or fee-based recruitment services. AMD and its subsidiaries are equal opportunity, inclusive employers and will consider all applicants without regard to age, ancestry, color, marital status, medical condition, mental or physical disability, national origin, race, religion, political and/or third-party affiliation, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We encourage applications from all qualified candidates and will accommodate applicants' needs under the respective laws throughout all stages of the recruitment and selection process.

AMD may use Artificial Intelligence to help screen, assess or select applicants for this position. AMD's "Responsible AI Policy" is available here.

This posting is for an existing vacancy.