Senior Software Engineer

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PlayStation also strives to create an inclusive environment that empowers employees and embraces diversity. We welcome and encourage everyone who has a passion and curiosity for innovation, technology, and play to explore our open positions and join our growing global team.

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Senior Software Engineer - Performance & Tooling

Aliso Viejo, Ca

The Vision

As a Senior Performance & Tooling Engineer, you will design and build advanced performance testing and monitoring tools. Your work will enable development teams to measure, optimize, and scale system performance across Linux, CPU, DPU, and PCIe environments. This role offers the opportunity to work on deeply technical, low-level engineering challenges that have a direct impact on product performance and reliability.

What You’Ll Do

• Design, build, and own a performance tooling suite across CPU/DPU/PCIe.
• Develop load generators to saturate PCIe, NICs, and storage paths; model real-world and worst-case network/storage traffic.
• Instrument the stack with Linux perf, ftrace, and eBPF to capture timings, contention, cache/memory effects, and I/O paths.
• Create repeatable experiments to characterize throughput, latency, jitter, tail behaviors, and scalability limits.
• Build automated performance testbeds and CI pipelines that run on every change (smoke, regression, soak, and chaos scenarios).
• Establish golden signals, SLOs, and dashboards; visualize trends and regressions for fast triage.
• Perform deep root-cause analysis across userspace, kernel, drivers, and firmware; propose and land fixes.
• Collaborate with kernel, networking, storage, and hardware teams to optimize across the x86-64 microarchitecture and PCIe topologies.

You’re a great fit if you have

• BS in Computer Science / Software Engineering, or 5+ years building low-level performance and load-testing tools.
• Proficiency in one or more systems languages (C/C++/Rust) and scripting for automation (Python/Bash).
• Mastery of Linux performance monitoring & tracing (perf, ftrace, eBPF/bcc/libbpf) in production environments.
• Deep understanding of the x86-64 microarchitecture.
• Strong knowledge of PCIe (link training, lanes, bandwidth math, peer-to-peer, DMA) and device/driver interactions.
• Comfort navigating kernel/userspace boundaries, syscalls, io_uring, and zero-copy I/O.
• Experience building reproducible experiments, analyzing large trace datasets, and communicating insights clearly.
• Excitement for open-ended problems, turning fuzzy ideas into solutions.
• Proficiency in one or more systems languages (C/C++/Rust) and scripting for automation (Python/Bash).
• Mastery of Linux performance monitoring & tracing (perf, ftrace, eBPF/bcc/libbpf) in production environments.
• Deep understanding of the x86-64 microarchitecture.
• Strong knowledge of PCIe (link training, lanes, bandwidth math, peer-to-peer, DMA) and device/driver interactions.
• Comfort navigating kernel/userspace boundaries, syscalls, io_uring, and zero-copy I/O.
• Experience building reproducible experiments, analyzing large trace datasets, and communicating insights clearly.
• Excitement for open-ended problems, turning fuzzy ideas into solutions.
• Curiosity foron emerging tech, including AI dev tools and introducing those that are pragmatic and boost developer velocity.

Bonus Xp

• DPU/NIC experience (e.g., queues, RSS, offloads, AF_XDP, SmartNICs/BlueField).
• High-performance I/O: DPDK, SPDK, NVMe/NVMe-oF, RDMA/RoCE, iSCSI, storage stack tuning.
• Observability stacks (e.g., perf ETM, BPF ring buffers, Prometheus/Grafana, OpenTelemetry) and flamegraph tooling.
• You take ownership of problems and feel empowered to fix them.
• You spot gaps, draft solutions, and rally teammates without waiting for detailed specs.
• You stay calm when priorities change (they will), communicate trade-offs, and keep momentum.
• Thrive in fast iterative cycles with quick reviews that drive continuous improvement and progress.
• Knowledge of Japanese language and culture is a plus.
• You enjoy playing video games!
• DPU/NIC experience (e.g., queues, RSS, offloads, AF_XDP, SmartNICs/BlueField).
• High-performance I/O: DPDK, SPDK, NVMe/NVMe-oF, RDMA/RoCE, iSCSI, storage stack tuning.
• Observability stacks (e.g., perf ETM, BPF ring buffers, Prometheus/Grafana, OpenTelemetry) and flamegraph tooling.
• You take ownership of problems and feel empowered to fix them.
• You spot gaps, draft solutions, and rally teammates without waiting for detailed specs.
• You stay calm when priorities change (they will), communicate trade-offs, and keep momentum.
• Thrive in fast iterative cycles with quick reviews that drive continuous improvement and progress.
• Knowledge of Japanese language and culture is a plus.

Please refer to our Candidate Privacy Notice for more information about how we process your personal information, and your data protection rights.

At SIE, we consider several factors when setting each role’s base pay range, including the competitive benchmarking data for the market and geographic location.

Please note that the base pay range may vary in line with our hybrid working policy and individual base pay will be determined based on job-related factors which may include knowledge, skills, experience, and location. 

In addition, this role is eligible for SIE’s top-tier benefits package that includes medical, dental, vision, matching 401(k), paid time off, wellness program and coveted employee discounts for Sony products. This role also may be eligible for a bonus package. Click here to learn more.

The estimated base pay range for this role is listed below.$177,300—$265,900 USD

Equal Opportunity Statement:

Sony is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All persons will receive consideration for employment without regard to gender (including gender identity, gender expression and gender reassignment), race (including colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin), religion or belief, marital or civil partnership status, disability, age, sexual orientation, pregnancy, maternity or parental status, trade union membership or membership in any other legally protected category.

We strive to create an inclusive environment, empower employees and embrace diversity. We encourage everyone to respond. 

PlayStation is a Fair Chance employer and qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records will be considered for employment.