Performance Engineer Jobs in San Jose, CA
Performance Engineer jobs in San Jose are concentrated in North San Jose, Downtown, and the Alviso corridor, with strong demand across semiconductor, enterprise software, and cloud infrastructure sectors. Employers hiring right now include TikTok, AMD, and Samsung Semiconductor Inc (US). Find a role that fits below and apply directly.
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Whether you’re designing next-gen processors, enabling AI breakthroughs, or bringing leading edge products to market, every role at AMD contributes to something bigger — technology that moves the world forward. Join us and, together, we’ll advance your career.
THE ROLE:
This role is a strong fit for an engineer who enjoys working across the AI software and hardware stack, solving technically challenging performance problems, and partnering directly with customers to make them successful.
You will help customers achieve meaningful improvements in model performance and system reliability. You will identify difficult bottlenecks, develop reusable solutions, and help shape the infrastructure and product capabilities needed to run demanding AI workloads efficiently at scale.
THE PERSON:
- Profile and optimize AI model training and inference workloads.
- Improve model throughput, latency, memory efficiency, scalability, and reliability.
- Identify bottlenecks across models, frameworks, compilers, runtimes, operating systems, and hardware.
- Optimize workloads involving large language models, diffusion models, recommendation systems, and other modern machine learning architectures.
- Develop performance tooling, benchmarks, automation, and observability systems.
- Investigate and resolve complex production issues affecting AI workloads.
- Collaborate with customers to understand their technical requirements, reproduce issues, and recommend effective solutions.
- Translate customer feedback into product and infrastructure improvements.
- Work closely with machine learning engineers, systems engineers, hardware teams, and product teams.
- Document performance findings, technical recommendations, and best practices.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:
- Strong software engineering skills and experience building production-quality systems.
- Experience working with AI infrastructure for model training, inference, or both.
- Demonstrated experience profiling and optimizing machine learning models or AI workloads.
- Strong foundations in computer architecture, including processors, memory hierarchies, parallelism, and performance tradeoffs.
- Solid understanding of systems performance concepts such as latency, throughput, memory bandwidth, utilization, and distributed communication.
- Proficiency in languages such as Python, C++, or similar systems-oriented programming languages.
- Experience with machine learning frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, or JAX.
- Strong debugging and analytical skills, with the ability to investigate problems across multiple layers of the technology stack.
- Clear written and verbal communication skills.
- A customer-focused mindset and willingness to work directly with customers through technical evaluations, deployments, troubleshooting, and ongoing support.
PREFERRED EXPERIENCE:
- Experience optimizing large language models, diffusion models, or recommendation models.
- Experience with GPU, accelerator, or distributed computing environments.
- Familiarity with technologies such as ROCm, HIP, CUDA, Triton, XLA, MLIR, NCCL, or similar performance-oriented tools and runtimes.
- Experience with distributed training, model serving, quantization, compilation, kernel optimization, or memory optimization.
- Experience operating AI systems in production environments.
- Prior experience in solutions engineering, field engineering, developer relations, or another customer-facing technical role.
- Experience designing benchmarks and conducting systematic performance analysis.
ACADEMIC CREDENTIALS:
- A PhD (or a master’s degree with equivalent experience) in artificial intelligence, machine learning, computer science, or a related field.
LOCATION:
San Jose, CA or Bellevue, WA preferred (Hybrid). Other US locations may be considered.
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Qualifications:
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.
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Find Performance Engineer JobsPerformance Engineer Job Market in San Jose
Who's Hiring
- TikTok63

- AMD24

- Samsung Semiconductor Inc (US)24

- Samsung Electronics16

- Etched8

Top Industries Hiring
- Technology & Software
- Electronics & Hardware
Performance Engineer Jobs in San Jose: Frequently Asked Questions
How do I get a performance engineer job in San Jose?
Focus your search on North San Jose and the Great America Parkway corridor, where semiconductor firms, cloud platform companies, and enterprise software vendors cluster. Roles in load testing, capacity planning, and systems optimization see the most consistent demand locally. Candidates who can demonstrate proficiency with tools like JMeter, Gatling, or observability platforms tend to move faster through hiring pipelines in San Jose's competitive tech market.
Which companies hire performance engineers in San Jose?
San Jose performance engineer roles are posted by TikTok, AMD, and Samsung Semiconductor Inc (US) and others right now, based on current listings on Migrate Mate as of October 2026. The local market is anchored by large-scale semiconductor manufacturers, networking hardware companies, and SaaS platforms that require continuous performance validation at scale.
Are there remote performance engineer jobs in San Jose?
Yes, though availability depends heavily on the role's scope, analytical and monitoring-focused positions tend to be more remote-friendly than hands-on lab or hardware-adjacent work. About 13% of performance engineer openings tied to San Jose are remote or hybrid as of October 2026, reflecting the city's software-heavy employer base. Cloud performance and APM roles are the most likely to offer flexible arrangements.
How can I get a performance engineer job in San Jose with little or no experience?
The most realistic entry path in San Jose is through a QA engineer or site reliability associate role at a mid-size SaaS or semiconductor company, then moving laterally into performance work. Many San Jose employers run internship pipelines through San Jose State University and Santa Clara University. Building a portfolio with open-source load testing projects and contributing to observability tooling gives candidates a concrete edge with local hiring managers.
Which industries hire the most performance engineers in San Jose?
The sectors hiring the most performance engineers in San Jose are Technology & Software and Electronics & Hardware, based on current listings on Migrate Mate as of October 2026. San Jose's role as a global center for chip design, networking infrastructure, and enterprise cloud services drives sustained demand across all three areas.
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