Junior/Assistant Specialist - Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Salary range:
The UC academic salary scales set the minimum pay determined by rank and step at appointment. See the following tables(s) for the current salary scale(s) for this position: T24 B . A reasonable full-time salary estimated for this position is $57000 - $73200

Percent time:
100%

Anticipated start:
Spring, 2027

Position duration:
One year, with the possibility of reappointment based on performance and availability of funding.

The SLICE Lab at UC Berkeley aims to democratize the design, programming, and integration of domain-specific computing at scale so that a wide-range of applications can benefit from specialized hardware, extending the continued growth in computational capabilities for future-generation computing ecosystems.

Under the direction of the Principal Investigator (PI), the Junior/Assistant Specialist will provide specialized technical support for research on compiler systems, agentic AI, and hardware-software co-design for emerging heterogeneous computing architectures.

Responsibilities include:

• Implementing and integrating intermediate representations, executable specifications, compiler abstractions, and multi-fidelity architectural models into the lab's research infrastructure. These tools will help researchers study the connections between application, compiler, architecture, and hardware-level decisions.

• Support experiments on agentic methods for automated design-space exploration, compiler synthesis and optimization, hardware specification refinement, and mapping machine learning and robotics workloads onto specialized accelerators and heterogeneous systems.

• The role will also includes developing testing and validation workflows, running benchmarks, and analyzing and documenting findings on programmability, correctness, performance, data movement, and architectural tradeoffs. The PI will set the research objectives and priorities.

Basic qualifications (required at time of application)

Bachelor's degree (or equivalent international degree) or enrolled in Bachelor's degree or equivalent international degree program

Additional qualifications (required at time of start)

Bachelor's degree (or equivalent international degree)

Preferred qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree or equivalent international degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a closely related technical field, or equivalent technical experience.

• Research or development experience in compiler systems, computer architecture, hardware-software co-design, or related systems areas.

• Strong programming experience in C/C++ and Python.

• Experience with compiler intermediate representations, compiler transformations, code generation, or program optimization.

• Knowledge of computer architecture, heterogeneous computing, and hardware-software interfaces.

• Experience developing and experimentally evaluating systems research prototypes.

• Experience with MLIR, LLVM, IREE, TVM, CIRCT, or comparable compiler and intermediate-representation frameworks.

• Experience designing compiler dialects, IR transformations, lowering pipelines, tiling and fusion strategies, quantization flows, instruction selection, target-specific code generation, or compiler optimization passes.

• Experience with hardware-software co-design, including using workload characterization and compiler-generated performance data to inform ISA, accelerator, memory-system, or microarchitectural design decisions.

• Experience with RTL and hardware-development infrastructure such as Verilog/SystemVerilog, FPGA prototyping, CIRCT, Chipyard, FireSim, Verilator, VCS, or comparable simulation and verification environments.

• Experience with architectural or multi-fidelity modeling, including functional, cycle-approximate, data-movement, performance, or hardware-interface models.

• Experience developing agentic AI or LLM-based systems for compiler construction, program synthesis, hardware generation, automated verification, design-space exploration, or software engineering.

• 2 required (contact information only)

Apply link:
https://aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05540

UC Berkeley is committed to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in our public mission of research, teaching, and service, consistent with UC Regents Policy 4400 and University of California Academic Personnel policy (APM 210 1-d). These values are embedded in our Principles of Community, which reflect our passion for critical inquiry, debate, discovery and innovation, and our deep commitment to contributing to a better world. Every member of the UC Berkeley community has a role in sustaining a safe, caring and humane environment in which these values can thrive.

The University of California, Berkeley is an Equal Opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, age, or protected veteran status.

For more information, please refer to the University of California's Affirmative Action and Nondiscrimination in Employment Policy and the University of California's Anti-Discrimination Policy.

In searches when letters of reference are required all letters will be treated as confidential per University of California policy and California state law. Please refer potential referees, including when letters are provided via a third party (i.e., dossier service or career center), to the UC Berkeley statement of confidentiality prior to submitting their letter.

As a University employee, you will be required to comply with all applicable University policies and/or collective bargaining agreements, as may be amended from time to time. Federal, state, or local government directives may impose additional requirements.

Unless stated otherwise, unambiguously, in the position description, this position does not include sponsorship of a new consular H-1B visa petition that would require payment of the $100,000 supplemental fee.

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• "Misconduct" means any violation of the policies or laws governing conduct at the applicant's previous place of employment, including, but not limited to, violations of policies or laws prohibiting sexual harassment, sexual assault, or other forms of harassment or discrimination, as defined by the employer.
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Berkeley, CA