# Senior Software Architect, Physical AI at Altera

- Company: Altera
- What the company does: Backed by a16z.
- Company website: https://www.altera.com
- Type: Startups (AI role)
- Level: Senior
- Location: San Jose, California, United States
- Work setup: On-site
- Posted: 2026-09-14
- Apply by: 2026-10-29
- Apply: https://altera.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Altera/job/San-Jose-California-United-States/Senior-Software-Architect--Physical-AI_R03079
- Page: https://www.1752.vc/careers/jobs/altera-senior-software-architect-physical-ai/

## About the role

As software architect, define and guide SDK architecture, APIs, hardware abstraction, device discovery, lifecycle management, diagnostics, and plugin interfaces. Architect high-performance modules for sensor ingestion, camera and video pipelines, ISP, compression, memory and buffer management, synchronization, networking, localization, and AI pre-processing.

## What they're looking for

- Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related field, plus 15+ years of relevant experience
- Strong C++ and Linux systems-development skills, including concurrency, performance optimization, and debugging
- Experience designing and shipping SDKs, middleware, runtimes, device frameworks, or developer-facing platform software
- Understanding of heterogeneous data movement across CPU, GPU, FPGA, DMA, shared memory, and high-speed I/O
- Experience with Holoscan, ROS 2, GStreamer, ffmpeg, OpenCV, or a comparable robotics or real-time framework
- Experience with hardware-accelerated video, vision, sensor, networking, or signal-processing pipelines