Systems Design Eng. - Client Systems Special Projects & Strategy

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc•Markham, ON

10d•Onsite

About The Position

At AMD, the mission is to build great products that accelerate next-generation computing experiences—from AI and data centers, to PCs, gaming and embedded systems. The company fosters a culture of innovation and collaboration, believing that progress comes from bold ideas, human ingenuity, and a shared passion. Joining AMD means experiencing a culture that pushes innovation limits, solves important challenges, and strives for execution excellence while being direct, humble, collaborative, and inclusive. The role is for a Principal Member of Technical Staff to lead client systems special projects and multi-generation strategy across AMD's client platform portfolio. This senior technical leadership position operates at a company-wide scope, requiring deep experience in silicon design, system design, and platform integration, along with a proven track record of technical leadership, cross-organizational influence, and strategic decision-making. The Systems Design Engineer - Client Systems – Special Projects & Strategy role works horizontally across Client Systems, Architecture, SoC/Platform teams, Product Management, and Customer Engineering. It addresses complex, high-impact problems that span multiple organizations, focusing on next-generation and follow-on generation platforms (2–4 year horizon) to influence direction early, before architectural and program commitments are finalized. This position demands exceptional systems-level judgment, credibility with senior technical and engineering leadership, and the ability to lead through influence. The person in this role will restore critical system-level and cross-organizational connectivity within AMD’s client platform ecosystem without adding organizational complexity. By combining silicon experience, system-level thinking, leadership credibility, and strategic scope, the role aims to enable faster, higher-quality decisions and ensure AMD’s client platforms are deliberately architected for the future, rather than optimized one generation at a time.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or equivalent required.

Nice To Haves

Direct experience in silicon design, silicon bring-up, or SoC/platform integration, including interactions between hardware, firmware, and software.
Working knowledge of SoC architecture, power/performance domains, memory subsystems, and I/O at a level sufficient to influence architectural decisions.
Experience in silicon architecture, design, pre-silicon verification or post-silicon validation, with a focus on HW/SW co-design and SoC/platform integration, including hardware, firmware and software interactions.
Extensive hands-on experience in client system design and platform integration, spanning HW/FW/OS/driver interactions.
Proven ability to reason about end-to-end system behavior rather than isolated components.
Experience delivering or supporting complex client platforms through multiple product generations.
Experience in power / performance tuning and strategies.
Demonstrated leadership in direct, matrixed or cross-functional environments, including technical leadership roles, program leadership, or prior engineering management responsibilities.
Experience influencing outcomes across teams without direct reporting authority.
Background working with or leading senior engineering teams, architects, or platform groups.
Experience contributing to or owning multi-generation technical or platform strategy.
Ability to connect technical depth to strategic business outcomes, including roadmap tradeoffs and long-lead decision making.
Demonstrated comfort operating with ambiguity and incomplete data.
Master’s or PhD in a relevant discipline strongly preferred.

Responsibilities

Lead high-impact special projects that span silicon, system, platform, and ecosystem boundaries, particularly where ownership is distributed across multiple organizations.
Frame ambiguous technical and organizational problems, define scope and objectives, and drive alignment to resolution.
Act as a single-threaded technical owner for initiatives that exceed the normal capacity or charter of existing execution teams.
Drive and contribute to long-range client system strategy, shaping platform direction for next-generation and future-generation products (2–4 years forward).
Identify system-level architectural opportunities and risks across compute, graphics, memory, I/O, power, thermals, firmware, and software integration.
Ensure long-lead system requirements are surfaced early and reflected in architectural and platform planning.
Partner closely with SoC Architecture, Platform Architecture, and Silicon Design teams to provide system-informed input into architectural tradeoffs and capability planning.
Influence SoC and platform decisions early, based on system behavior, integration risk, and real-world constraints—without assuming formal architecture ownership.
Translate system-level insights into actionable guidance for silicon and platform roadmap discussions.
Operate as a trusted senior technical peer to other senior engineers and technical leadership across Client Systems, Architecture, Product, and CE organizations.
Drive cross-functional alignment through technical credibility, structured reasoning, and clear communication.
Mentor senior engineers and raise the bar for system-level and strategic thinking across the organization.
Provide system-level technical input to Product Management to support roadmap definition and prioritization.
Partner with Customer Engineering to elevate recurring customer and ecosystem themes into forward-looking system and platform strategy.
Ensure external and ecosystem dependencies are factored into future platform decisions.