DPU IO Architect, Infrastructure Silicon

Meta•Austin, TX

1d•$178,000 - $250,000

About The Position

Meta's Infrastructure Silicon organization designs custom silicon that powers our data center infrastructure — SmartNICs/IPUs/DPUs, AI accelerators, and networking ASICs. We are looking for a Data Processing Unit (DPU) I/O Architect to own the I/O subsystem and the hardware/software interface between our silicon and the software that drives it - PCIe, DMA and offload engines, I/O virtualization, Confidential Computing, and system management. You'll define how the hardware presents itself to firmware and software - the register and programming models, descriptor and doorbell interfaces, and offload interfaces - and decide what belongs in hardware versus firmware versus software. You'll work hand in hand with the firmware, driver, and RTL teams, and carry your designs from early path-finding through implementation and silicon bring-up.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, relevant technical field, or equivalent practical experience
8+ years of relevant industry experience architecting I/O and system subsystems and their hardware/software interfaces - register and programming models, DMA and descriptor interfaces, doorbells, and offload interfaces - for NIC/DPU or comparable ASICs
Experience with PCIe data link and transport protocols, including TLP formats, transaction types (posted/non-posted/completions), and ordering rules
Experience with I/O virtualization technologies such as SR-IOV and SIOV
Experience with PCIe capabilities such as Advanced Error Reporting, Downstream Port Containment, and Integrity and Data Encryption
Experience with on-chip scheduling and arbitration architectures and quality-of-service mechanisms - transaction/packet schedulers, arbiters, traffic shapers, and rate limiters (meters/policers, token buckets) - and their impact on latency, fairness, bandwidth partitioning, and throughput
Experience with symmetric and asymmetric cryptography concepts and inline data encryption (e.g., AES-XTS, AES-GCM)
Experience with x86 and/or ARM system architecture, including virtualization technologies, IOMMUs, and interrupt virtualization
Experience with data center workloads and their I/O characteristics
Experience driving architectural decisions independently and influencing their direction through data

Nice To Haves

PhD in Computer Science, Computer Engineering or Electrical Engineering
15+ years of relevant industry experience architecting I/O and system subsystems and hardware/software interfaces for NIC/DPU or comparable ASICs
Experience designing PCIe endpoints and root complexes
Experience with hardware description languages (e.g., SystemVerilog, VHDL) and simulation environments used in ASIC development flows
Experience developing Python-based automation pipelines for simulation orchestration, regression testing, and performance data analysis
Experience building or scaling performance modeling infrastructure for hyperscale data center ASICs, including network, storage, or AI inference accelerator designs
Experience with system-management concepts including server/BMC interactions, and protocols such as I2C, I3C, USB/Ethernet, USB/MCTP, and SPI/eSPI
Experience designing high-performance DMA engines and offload accelerators, such as for cryptography and compression
Experience with post-silicon performance validation and model-to-hardware correlation methodologies
Understanding of Confidential Computing use cases and the related PCIe protocols -- Data Object Exchange (DOE), Security Protocol and Data Model (SPDM), Management Component Transport Protocol (MCTP), and TEE Device Interface Security Protocol (TDISP)

Responsibilities

Own the I/O subsystem architecture for our DPUs - PCIe, DMA and offload engines, I/O virtualization, confidential computing, and system management -- from early path-finding through silicon bring-up
Decide what runs in hardware, what runs in firmware, and what stays in host software, and design the interfaces between them
Define the hardware/software interface - register and programming models, descriptor and doorbell interfaces, error and interrupt models, and the offload interfaces firmware and drivers build on
Work closely with firmware, driver, and software teams so the interface is clean, efficient, and genuinely usable, and evolve it as their needs change
Weigh the performance, power, and area trade-offs behind your choices and back them with data, partnering with performance modeling where deeper analysis is needed
Work closely with design, DV, and PD teams on feature definition and PPA tradeoff; refine architecture to meet the design and PD constraints. Define architecture to maximize DV complexity including defining specific features to help ease DV
Support Design, DV and PD to resolve interface and integration issues as they come up. Support post-silicon bring-up of the I/O subsystem