Senior Software Engineer, Low Latency Physical AI Sensor Systems
NVIDIA Corporation · Santa Clara, CA
$184,000–$356,500from the description
Jul 1, 2026
Santa Clara, CA
Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A senior systems software engineering role focused on building the software infrastructure that moves high-volume sensor data — from cameras, radar, RF, and medical devices — into GPU memory at very low latency. Day-to-day work spans driver development, networking protocols, hardware/software interfaces, and GPU data pipelines, with the goal of simplifying sensor integration across robotics, healthcare, and industrial applications. Suits engineers with deep Linux systems and networking experience who are comfortable working close to hardware.
Senior level · 8+ years · Santa Clara, CA · Full-time
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Roughly 90 people in the Santa Clara, CA area plausibly meet what this posting asks for (software developers). range 20–140
Applicant volume Moderate — A normal amount of company. The rare requirements below are what will separate a shortlisted application from the rest.
Rare in this occupation — lead with these, and say what you built with them.
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $217,796 (middle half $177,469–$231,052). This posting is about at that midpoint.
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (6)
The posting covers two salary bands: Level 4 ($184,000–$287,500) and Level 5 ($224,000–$356,500). The min and max reported here span both bands combined; the actual offer will depend on the level assigned.
Location is not explicitly stated in the posting; NVIDIA's Holoscan team is headquartered in Santa Clara, CA — the CBSA reflects that assumption.
The degree requirement accepts 'equivalent experience' in lieu of a BS/MS, so no formal degree is hard-gated.
AI coding tools (Claude, Codex, Cursor) appear in the required 'What we need to see' section with explicit 'solid understanding and hands-on experience' language, making them a hard gate despite being an unusual requirement for a systems role.
SPI, I2C, and I2S are listed alongside PCIe/DMA/FPGA under required hardware/software interface familiarity; they are subsumed into the FPGA/hardware interface cluster rather than emitted as separate skills, as they represent the same interface-familiarity requirement.
CUDA/GPUDirect, sensor pipeline knowledge, distributed systems, and agentic AI tooling all appear under 'Ways to stand out from the crowd' — the preferred/nice-to-have section.
Read the full posting
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