Job description

ADVANCE YOUR CAREER. ADVANCE THE WORLD. At AMD, we believe technology has the power to solve the world’s most important challenges. From advancing healthcare and scientific discovery to powering AI and the technologies people rely on every day, innovation at AMD is shaping the future. Whether you’re designing next-gen processors, enabling AI breakthroughs, or bringing leading edge products to market, every role at AMD contributes to something bigger — technology that moves the world forward. Join us and, together, we’ll advance your career. THE ROLE: AMD is seeking a Principal Competitive Architect Specialist to lead competitive intelligence and hands-on performance analysis for custom silicon used in AI and data center computing. This role will build a fact-based view of competing accelerators, internally developed silicon, platforms, software capabilities, pricing, and go-to-market strategies, then translate those insights into clear recommendations for product and business leaders. You will combine market research with direct technical evaluation on cloud instances to assess real-world performance, economics, and product trade-offs. Your work will help shape product strategy, roadmap priorities, pricing, investment decisions, and areas of differentiation across AMD's data center portfolio. THE PERSON: You are a highly analytical and technically fluent competitive strategist who can move comfortably between product details, performance data, market dynamics, and executive decision-making. You are rigorous about evidence, able to distinguish confirmed facts from estimates, and skilled at turning complex findings into concise, defensible recommendations. You thrive in a cross-functional environment and can work independently to frame ambiguous questions, build repeatable analysis, and influence senior stakeholders. You have the curiosity to investigate emerging custom silicon products and the practical technical skills to evaluate them directly in cloud environments. KEY RESPONSIBILITIES Competitive Assessment & Market Intelligence • Develop and maintain comprehensive competitive assessments, including feature matrices, product comparisons, pricing analyses, and market landscape reviews. • Monitor competitor product launches, model releases, acquisitions, partnerships, pricing changes, funding activity, and go-to-market motions. • Synthesize fragmented technical, commercial, and market information into a clear view of competitor strategy, strengths, gaps, and likely direction. • Maintain a current competitive landscape for custom silicon across hyperscalers, cloud providers, AI infrastructure companies, and other relevant market participants. Hands-On Performance Evaluation • Evaluate competitive performance hands-on using publicly available cloud instances and accessible software environments. • Design and execute repeatable benchmarks that assess performance, efficiency, scalability, usability, and cost across representative workloads. • Validate results carefully, document methodology and assumptions, and separate measured results from modeled or externally reported data. • Partner with performance engineering and workload modeling teams to interpret results and identify architectural or software drivers of observed performance. Strategy & Executive Communication • Create executive-ready competitive insights that influence product strategy, roadmap prioritization, pricing, and investment decisions. • Translate technical and market findings into concise strategic implications, recommended actions, and clear decision points. • Provide timely competitive readouts for major launches, market shifts, and emerging threats or opportunities. • Communicate uncertainty and confidence levels clearly, ensuring recommendations remain evidence-based and defensible. Competitive Intelligence Operations • Establish repeatable processes and tooling for collecting, validating, maintaining, and distributing competitive intelligence across the company. • Create common templates, taxonomies, source standards, and review processes to improve consistency and reuse. • Build a trusted repository of product specifications, performance data, pricing, market activity, and strategic assessments. • Coordinate with legal and compliance partners to ensure competitive research follows applicable company policies and information-handling requirements. Cross-Functional Partnership • Partner closely with Product Management to inform roadmap decisions and identify areas of strategic differentiation. • Collaborate with architecture, engineering, software, finance, marketing, sales, and corporate strategy teams to connect competitive findings to business and product decisions. • Engage internal subject-matter experts to validate technical conclusions and improve the quality of competitive assessments. • Support planning cycles, product reviews, and investment discussions with current, decision-oriented competitive analysis. REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS • Extensive experience in competitive analysis, product strategy, product management, performance engineering, or a related role in semiconductors, cloud computing, AI infrastructure, or data center systems. • Deep understanding of processors, AI accelerators, custom silicon, system architecture, software stacks, and cloud deployment models. • Hands-on experience evaluating hardware or software performance in cloud environments, including benchmark design, data collection, and results interpretation. • Demonstrated ability to analyze product capabilities, performance, pricing, and market dynamics using incomplete or rapidly changing information. • Ability to create concise, executive-ready narratives that connect technical findings to product, pricing, roadmap, and investment decisions. • Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to influence across technical and business organizations. • High standards for analytical rigor, source validation, documentation, and protection of confidential information. PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS • Experience analyzing custom silicon developed by hyperscalers, cloud providers, AI infrastructure companies, or semiconductor vendors. • Familiarity with AI training and inference workloads, high-performance computing, networking, memory systems, compilers, runtime software, and performance optimization. • Experience with benchmarking tools, scripting, data analysis, cloud provisioning, and performance-per-dollar or total-cost modeling. • Established network across the semiconductor, cloud, or AI infrastructure ecosystem and experience gathering insight from customers, partners, analysts, and public sources. • Experience supporting senior leadership, long-range planning, product definition, or strategic investment decisions. ACADEMIC CREDENTIALS: BS/MS in Electrical or Computer Engineering LOCATION: San Jose, California or Austin, Texas preferred. This role is not eligible for visa sponsorship. #LI-RW1 Benefits offered are described: AMD benefits at a glance . AMD does not accept unsolicited resumes from headhunters, recruitment agencies, or fee-based recruitment services. AMD and its subsidiaries are equal opportunity, inclusive employers and will consider all applicants without regard to age, ancestry, color, marital status, medical condition, mental or physical disability, national origin, race, religion, political and/or third-party affiliation, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We encourage applications from all qualified candidates and will accommodate applicants’ needs under the respective laws throughout all stages of the recruitment and selection process. AMD may use Artificial Intelligence to help screen, assess or select applicants for this position. AMD’s “Responsible AI Policy” is available here. This posting is for an existing vacancy.

Requirements

Must-haves

ADVANCE YOUR CAREER. ADVANCE THE WORLD.
Competitive Assessment & Market Intelligence
Develop and maintain comprehensive competitive assessments, including feature matrices, product comparisons, pricing analyses, and market landscape reviews.
Monitor competitor product launches, model releases, acquisitions, partnerships, pricing changes, funding activity, and go-to-market motions.
Synthesize fragmented technical, commercial, and market information into a clear view of competitor strategy, strengths, gaps, and likely direction.
Maintain a current competitive landscape for custom silicon across hyperscalers, cloud providers, AI infrastructure companies, and other relevant market participants.
Hands-On Performance Evaluation
Evaluate competitive performance hands-on using publicly available cloud instances and accessible software environments.
Design and execute repeatable benchmarks that assess performance, efficiency, scalability, usability, and cost across representative workloads.
Validate results carefully, document methodology and assumptions, and separate measured results from modeled or externally reported data.
Partner with performance engineering and workload modeling teams to interpret results and identify architectural or software drivers of observed performance.
Strategy & Executive Communication
Create executive-ready competitive insights that influence product strategy, roadmap prioritization, pricing, and investment decisions.
Translate technical and market findings into concise strategic implications, recommended actions, and clear decision points.
Provide timely competitive readouts for major launches, market shifts, and emerging threats or opportunities.
Communicate uncertainty and confidence levels clearly, ensuring recommendations remain evidence-based and defensible.
Competitive Intelligence Operations
Establish repeatable processes and tooling for collecting, validating, maintaining, and distributing competitive intelligence across the company.

Nice-to-haves

Experience analyzing custom silicon developed by hyperscalers, cloud providers, AI infrastructure companies, or semiconductor vendors.
Familiarity with AI training and inference workloads, high-performance computing, networking, memory systems, compilers, runtime software, and performance optimization.
Experience with benchmarking tools, scripting, data analysis, cloud provisioning, and performance-per-dollar or total-cost modeling.
Established network across the semiconductor, cloud, or AI infrastructure ecosystem and experience gathering insight from customers, partners, analysts, and public sources.
Experience supporting senior leadership, long-range planning, product definition, or strategic investment decisions.
San Jose, California or Austin, Texas preferred.

Application prep

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Keywords to mirror

aigo

Platform: amd
Effort: medium

Benefits

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