Senior Director / Vice President of Software Engineering – Front-End Design Tools & AI Acceleration (EDA + Agentic AI)

Job Details

Job Description:

Role

We’re seeking a Senior Director or Vice President of Software Engineering (title commensurate with experience) to lead the development of Altera’s flagship FPGA design platform — Quartus! This is a high-impact leadership role with a dual mandate:

• Delivering world-class front-end EDA tools, and
• Reimagining the FPGA development experience in the AI era — including AI-accelerated workloads and agentic design experiences.
  
  

You’ll lead a talented, mission-driven engineering team (~100 engineers), manage a diverse suite of tools, and help drive a transformative AI-first strategy that positions FPGAs at the center of tomorrow’s compute stack.

Your Mission

• Drive the Future of Agentic, AI-Powered Design
• Lead the transformation toward intelligent and contextual development environments, powered by the latest in AI/LLM technology.
• Define the vision for AI-assisted design using LLMs and agentic workflows
• Build IDE integrations and tooling copilots tailored for FPGA developers
• Partner closely with product, UX, and AI platform teams to deliver seamless, intelligent experiences
• Lead and Scale a World-Class EDA Tooling Team
• Oversee the full-stack development of Quartus front-end tools, including:
• Design entrance (schematic/coding interfaces)
• GUI frameworks
• IP integration and reuse
• Timing analysis and debug environments
• Core infrastructure and design databases
• Foster technical excellence, reliable execution, and high product quality. Build a culture of innovation and ownership across the team.
• Enable AI Acceleration Through Smarter FPGA Development
• Accelerating AI workloads is a priority — and FPGA design must evolve to meet it. You will:
• Collaborate with architecture and hardware teams to ensure the front-end tooling supports AI acceleration use cases, including custom dataflow and ML model mapping
• Drive integration of AI-specific IPs, reference designs, and optimization flows
• Ensure the design environment is intuitive and scalable for engineers building AI/ML solutions on FPGAs
  
  

Salary Range

The pay range below is for Bay Area California only. Actual salary may vary based on a number of factors including job location, job-related knowledge, skills, experiences, trainings, etc. We also offer incentive opportunities that reward employees based on individual and company performance.

$221.5K - $326.3K USD

We use artificial intelligence to screen, assess, or select applicants for the position.

Qualifications

What You Bring

Core Experience

• Proven leadership of large-scale engineering teams (preferably 50 engineers)
• Deep understanding of EDA tools and FPGA development workflows
• Technical fluency in GUI/IDE frameworks, design data models, and toolchain integration
• Familiarity with hardware/software co-design and FPGA-based acceleration
  
  

AI-First, Future-Forward Thinking

• Experience with or strong interest in AI/ML acceleration on FPGA platforms
• Understanding of agentic AI, LLM copilots, and developer-facing AI tools
• Familiarity with platforms like GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Windsurf, or equivalent
• Ability to translate innovation into usable, production-ready tools
  
  

Leadership & Communication

• Strong communicator and cross-functional collaborator
• Capable of influencing senior stakeholders and aligning teams toward a shared vision
• Committed to mentorship, diversity, and building a healthy engineering culture
  
  

Job Type

Regular

Shift

Shift 1 (United States of America)

Primary Location:

San Jose, California, United States

Additional Locations:

Posting Statement

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, religious creed, sex, national origin, ancestry, age, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, military and veteran status, marital status, pregnancy, gender, gender expression, gender identity, sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by local law, regulation, or ordinance.