Principal Engineer Jobs in San Jose, CA
Principal Engineer jobs in San Jose are in strong demand, concentrated in North San Jose, Downtown, and the Santana Row corridor across semiconductor, enterprise software, and networking hardware sectors. Companies actively hiring include Cadence Design Systems, Micron Technology, and Analog Devices. Scan the live roles below and apply to whichever ones fit.
Find Principal Engineer JobsOverview
Open roles829+
Top employerCadence Design Systems
Work type58% Hybrid
Top credentialBachelor's degree in electrical engineering
Companies hiring44
Showing 5 of 829+ Principal Engineer jobs
Principal Engineer, Efficient GenAI
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Added 1d ago
AMD
Principal Engineer, Efficient GenAI
San Jose, California
Added 1d ago
Sr. Staff / Principal Physical Design Engineer
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Added 2d ago
SK hynix memory solutions
Sr. Staff / Principal Physical Design Engineer
San Jose, California
Added 2d ago
Principal ASIC Design Engineer
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Added 3d ago
Micron Technology
Principal ASIC Design Engineer
San Jose, California
Added 3d ago
Principal Signal Integrity Engineer (SI/PI)
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Added 3d ago
AMD
Principal Signal Integrity Engineer (SI/PI)
San Jose, California
Added 3d ago
Senior Principal Software Engineer
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Added 3d ago
Cadence Design Systems
Senior Principal Software Engineer
San Jose, California
Added 3d ago
Added 1d ago
Principal Engineer, Efficient GenAI
AMD·San Jose, California
Job functions:
Hybrid
Master's degree
5,001-10,000 employees
Job Description
Overview:
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.
Responsibilities:
THE PERSON:
Why Join Us?
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:
PREFERRED EXPERIENCE:
ACADEMIC CREDENTIALS:
LOCATION:
#LI-MV1
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.
ADVANCE YOUR CAREER. ADVANCE THE WORLD.
At AMD, we believe technology has the power to solve the world’s most important challenges. From advancing healthcare and scientific discovery to powering AI and the technologies people rely on every day, innovation at AMD is shaping the future.
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:
The AI Models and Applications team at AMD is looking for a specialized Principal Engineer who is passionate about enabling innovative and efficient Generative AI training and inference at scale. You will be part of a core team of incredibly talented specialists and work on scaling training and inference for the latest Generative AI models.
THE PERSON:
You have a deep technical understanding and hands-on experience with the latest Generative AI applications in at least one of the following areas: large language models (LLMs), 3D World and Action Models, or image/video generation models. You have experience training models at scale and are passionate about developing efficient approaches to enable distributed training and inference on AMD devices.
Why Join Us?
- Exciting Opportunities: As a senior member of the team, you will be at the forefront of innovation, working with the latest Generative AI models and algorithms. You will have the opportunity to shape the future of AI model training and inference optimization across a variety of applications.
- Talented Team: Join a team of highly skilled industry specialists who are passionate about pushing the boundaries of AI. Collaborate with like-minded professionals and learn from the best in the field.
- Cutting-Edge Technology: Work with state-of-the-art Generative AI algorithms and software, enabling you to stay ahead of the curve and drive advancements in AI model training at scale and deployment.
- Impactful Work: Your contributions will directly influence how cutting-edge Generative AI models across the industry are efficiently trained at scale, as well as how inference solutions are deployed to serve millions of customers, making a significant difference across various industries and applications.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:
- Propose and apply innovative techniques to support both training and inference, including innovative transformer architectures, parallelism strategies for training on large clusters, inference optimization techniques such as speculative decoding, and optimal KV-caching strategies.
- Implement novel, efficient architectures for Generative AI models for training and inference and showcase the benefits on AMD platforms.
- Work with open-source frameworks and communities (e.g., PyTorch, JAX, vLLM, SGLang) to integrate AMD-optimized models and libraries and publish training recipes.
- Collaborate with software and hardware teams to co-optimize end-to-end performance on current and future AMD solutions.
- Increase adoption of agentic workflows for optimizing and deploying Generative AI applications at scale on AMD platforms.
- Publish and promote your work at external venues, including major conferences.
- Collaborate with researchers within AMD and across industry and academia to promote innovation on AMD platforms.
PREFERRED EXPERIENCE:
- Strong technical expertise in Generative AI model training and inference, with familiarity working with deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch, JAX, vLLM, SGLang, and MuJoCo.
- Strong technical expertise in algorithmic innovation for efficient Generative AI applications across both training and inference.
- Expertise and publications in one or more of the following preferred areas: efficient model architectures, optimized training, innovative parallelism strategies, or low-precision training.
- Additional plus if publications have been presented at conferences such as NeurIPS, CVPR, ECCV, ICCV, ICML, or ICLR.
- Experience productizing Generative AI models and training foundation models at scale.
- Excellent written, verbal, and presentation skills, with the ability to coordinate effectively both internally and externally.
- Several years of experience in AI, deep learning, and related software development.
ACADEMIC CREDENTIALS:
PhD or master’s degree in computer science, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, or a related field.
LOCATION:
San Jose, CA (Hybrid)
Alternative locations in Seattle, WA, or Austin, TX may be considered.
#LI-MV1
#LI-HYBRID
Qualifications:
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.
AMD
Principal Engineer, Efficient GenAI
San Jose, California
Added 1d ago5,001-10,000 employees
Job functions:
Hybrid
Master's degree
Job Description
Overview:
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.
Responsibilities:
THE PERSON:
Why Join Us?
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:
PREFERRED EXPERIENCE:
ACADEMIC CREDENTIALS:
LOCATION:
#LI-MV1
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.
ADVANCE YOUR CAREER. ADVANCE THE WORLD.
At AMD, we believe technology has the power to solve the world’s most important challenges. From advancing healthcare and scientific discovery to powering AI and the technologies people rely on every day, innovation at AMD is shaping the future.
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:
The AI Models and Applications team at AMD is looking for a specialized Principal Engineer who is passionate about enabling innovative and efficient Generative AI training and inference at scale. You will be part of a core team of incredibly talented specialists and work on scaling training and inference for the latest Generative AI models.
THE PERSON:
You have a deep technical understanding and hands-on experience with the latest Generative AI applications in at least one of the following areas: large language models (LLMs), 3D World and Action Models, or image/video generation models. You have experience training models at scale and are passionate about developing efficient approaches to enable distributed training and inference on AMD devices.
Why Join Us?
- Exciting Opportunities: As a senior member of the team, you will be at the forefront of innovation, working with the latest Generative AI models and algorithms. You will have the opportunity to shape the future of AI model training and inference optimization across a variety of applications.
- Talented Team: Join a team of highly skilled industry specialists who are passionate about pushing the boundaries of AI. Collaborate with like-minded professionals and learn from the best in the field.
- Cutting-Edge Technology: Work with state-of-the-art Generative AI algorithms and software, enabling you to stay ahead of the curve and drive advancements in AI model training at scale and deployment.
- Impactful Work: Your contributions will directly influence how cutting-edge Generative AI models across the industry are efficiently trained at scale, as well as how inference solutions are deployed to serve millions of customers, making a significant difference across various industries and applications.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:
- Propose and apply innovative techniques to support both training and inference, including innovative transformer architectures, parallelism strategies for training on large clusters, inference optimization techniques such as speculative decoding, and optimal KV-caching strategies.
- Implement novel, efficient architectures for Generative AI models for training and inference and showcase the benefits on AMD platforms.
- Work with open-source frameworks and communities (e.g., PyTorch, JAX, vLLM, SGLang) to integrate AMD-optimized models and libraries and publish training recipes.
- Collaborate with software and hardware teams to co-optimize end-to-end performance on current and future AMD solutions.
- Increase adoption of agentic workflows for optimizing and deploying Generative AI applications at scale on AMD platforms.
- Publish and promote your work at external venues, including major conferences.
- Collaborate with researchers within AMD and across industry and academia to promote innovation on AMD platforms.
PREFERRED EXPERIENCE:
- Strong technical expertise in Generative AI model training and inference, with familiarity working with deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch, JAX, vLLM, SGLang, and MuJoCo.
- Strong technical expertise in algorithmic innovation for efficient Generative AI applications across both training and inference.
- Expertise and publications in one or more of the following preferred areas: efficient model architectures, optimized training, innovative parallelism strategies, or low-precision training.
- Additional plus if publications have been presented at conferences such as NeurIPS, CVPR, ECCV, ICCV, ICML, or ICLR.
- Experience productizing Generative AI models and training foundation models at scale.
- Excellent written, verbal, and presentation skills, with the ability to coordinate effectively both internally and externally.
- Several years of experience in AI, deep learning, and related software development.
ACADEMIC CREDENTIALS:
PhD or master’s degree in computer science, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, or a related field.
LOCATION:
San Jose, CA (Hybrid)
Alternative locations in Seattle, WA, or Austin, TX may be considered.
#LI-MV1
#LI-HYBRID
Qualifications:
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.
See All 829+ Principal Engineer Jobs in San Jose
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Find Principal Engineer JobsPrincipal Engineer Job Market in San Jose
Who's Hiring
- Cadence Design Systems81
- Micron Technology73
- Analog Devices49
- AMD41
- Renesas41
Top Industries Hiring
- Electronics & Hardware
- Technology & Software
Principal Engineer Jobs in San Jose: Frequently Asked Questions
How do I get a principal engineer job in San Jose?
Target the semiconductor, enterprise software, and networking hardware companies concentrated in North San Jose and the Alviso corridor, where the density of principal engineer openings is highest. Candidates with system architecture experience, a record of leading cross-functional technical decisions, and familiarity with large-scale distributed systems stand out. Engaging with San Jose's deep network of engineering meetups and alumni groups at nearby research universities can open doors faster than cold applications.
Which companies hire principal engineers in San Jose?
San Jose principal engineer roles are posted by Cadence Design Systems, Micron Technology, and Analog Devices and others right now, based on current listings on Migrate Mate as of September 2026. San Jose's hiring base skews heavily toward established semiconductor firms, enterprise infrastructure companies, and large-scale cloud platform providers with significant engineering campuses in the city.
Are there remote principal engineer jobs in San Jose?
Yes, though availability depends heavily on the role: principal engineers in software architecture and platform engineering often work remotely, while those in hardware, semiconductor design, or lab-adjacent work are almost always on-site. About 67% of principal engineer openings tied to San Jose are remote or hybrid as of September 2026, with the strongest remote options concentrated in software infrastructure and cloud platform teams.
How can I get a principal engineer job in San Jose with little or no experience?
The most realistic entry path is landing a senior software engineer or staff engineer role at one of San Jose's mid-size enterprise software or semiconductor firms, then building toward principal-level scope internally. Companies in the North San Jose tech corridor frequently promote from within and often prefer candidates who have grown through their engineering ladder. Contributing to open-source projects widely used in the networking or storage space, which are well-represented in San Jose, adds credibility that accelerates that progression.
Which industries hire the most principal engineers in San Jose?
Most principal engineer openings in San Jose sit in Electronics & Hardware and Technology & Software, per current listings on Migrate Mate as of September 2026. San Jose's position as the center of Silicon Valley's semiconductor and enterprise networking industries means demand for principal-level technical leadership is driven primarily by companies building complex, long-cycle hardware and software systems rather than consumer applications.
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