Principal Graphics Software Architect in Bristol

The role Imagination is an industry authority in designing power‑efficient and high‑performance GPUs for graphics and compute workloads. You will be joining a world‑class hardware and software architecture team, helping our customers to integrate and achieve success with our GPUs by driving software architecture across our silicon IP products. Your role will have broad visibility within the organisation and provides the opportunity for close engagement with our key customers and internal engineering and product teams.

You will:

• Work across multiple platforms and application domains, from consumer or mobile to automotive or data centre, to understand how graphics software is deployed and executed on Imagination products.
• Develop the software architecture responsible for mapping multiple modern graphics APIs from high level, user‑facing software to silicon deployment.
• Investigate and optimise end‑to‑end performance of various graphics software, including proposing and prototyping new features or techniques at the boundary between hardware and software.
• Work with product owners to understand and define the roadmap for graphics APIs and their implementation across current and future hardware platforms.
• Maintain a holistic view of graphics software architecture, informing and coordinating with Imagination teams working on specific areas of implementation.
• Work with customers to understand their issues and steer the technical roadmap to help solve issues they face.
• Establish the technical standards and architectural software patterns that Imagination uses to develop and support multiple hardware generations and graphics APIs.
• Collaborate with the wider ecosystem: evaluating, developing and refining common standards, APIs and technologies to efficiently deliver high‑quality and performant graphics.

About You

Committed to making your customers, stakeholders and colleagues successful, you’re an excellent communicator, listener and collaborator who builds trusted partnerships by delivering what you say, when you say. You’re curious, solutions orientated and a world‑class problem solver who constantly seeks opportunities to innovate and achieve the best possible outcome to the highest imaginable standard.

You’ll have:

• A background of 5+ years in commercial software development in a graphics‑related field.
• In‑depth knowledge of at least one modern 3D graphics API and its associated software ecosystems (e.g. Vulkan, DirectX, OpenGL ES, Metal).
• Demonstrable technical expertise in the optimisation of software targeting such ecosystems (e.g. game engines, visual effects, UI frameworks).
• Experience with GPU profiling or API tracing tools.
• Knowledge of how to write and optimise graphics shaders or compute kernels.
• Understanding of both the fixed‑function and programmable aspects of GPU architecture.
• Experience of working directly with senior technical stakeholders and mapping their requirements and requests back into product roadmap items.
• Excellent problem‑solving abilities along with the ability to break down and solve problems and complex situations which lack existing solutions.
• Experience of architecting software products spanning multiple development teams and enabling iterative development.

You might also have:

• A solid understanding of computer architecture at both instruction level and system level, e.g. understanding memory and communication interfaces and how they impact software.
• Experience of working closely with silicon architects and design engineers to improve platforms for software applications.
• Exposure to graphics/display drivers for Android/Linux/Windows operating systems.
• Experience interacting with open‑source communities and external ecosystems.
• Understanding of debug or performance analysis hardware in support of application development.
• Experience with presenting at a technical conference or supporting external events and shows.
• Occasional willingness to travel, working onsite to support or train our customers around the world.
• A breadth of software programming experience that spans multiple languages and development platforms.