---
title: 'Sr. Staff Performance Tuning Engineer - CPU PMU & Virtualization at NIO USA, INC'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/sr-staff-performance-tuning-engineer-cpu-pmu-virtualization-nio-usa-inc-san-jose-nk6pmzhnny88'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-13'
---

# Sr. Staff Performance Tuning Engineer - CPU PMU & Virtualization at NIO USA, INC

- **Company:** NIO USA, INC
- **Location:** San Jose, CA
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-06-18
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-13
- **Apply:** https://jobs.lever.co/nio-usa/40c6cba2-5762-4f2c-a049-63d74d1aef72

## Job description

## About NIO

NIO Inc. is a pioneer and a leading company in the global smart electric vehicle market. Founded in November 2014, NIO aspires to shape a sustainable and brighter future with the mission of “Blue Sky Coming”. NIO envisions itself as a user enterprise where innovative technology meets experience excellence. NIO designs, develops, manufactures and sells smart electric vehicles, driving innovations in next-generation core technologies. NIO distinguishes itself through continuous technological breakthroughs and innovations, exceptional products and services, and a community for shared growth. NIO provides premium smart electric vehicles under the NIO brand, premium smart electric vehicles for families through the ONVO brand, and small smart high-end electric cars with the FIREFLY brand.

## Responsibilities

Performance Analysis and Optimization

- Identify and analyze performance bottlenecks across CPU, memory hierarchy, cache, interconnect, and interrupt subsystems.
- Leverage hardware PMU counters to measure and interpret cycles, instructions, cache misses, branch mispredictions, TLB misses, and stall cycles.
- Compute and analyze performance metrics such as IPC, CPI, MPKI, memory bandwidth utilization, and stall breakdowns.
- Optimize system software, applications, and drivers for throughput, latency, and performance determinism.

Virtualization Performance Tuning

- Profile and reduce hypervisor overhead, including VM exits, interrupt injection, and stage-2 MMU translation costs.
- Optimize vCPU placement strategies, huge page usage, and IRQ affinity for performance-sensitive workloads.
- Analyze and tune virtio and IOMMU performance paths.
- Investigate cross-core and cross-cluster latency issues, including IPI overhead and interrupt routing on ARM-based systems.

CPU PMU and Microarchitectural Analysis

- Configure and interpret ARM PMUv3 and related vendor-specific performance monitoring extensions.
- Apply Top-Down Microarchitecture Analysis (TMA) to identify frontend/backend bottlenecks.
- Correlate PMU-derived metrics with kernel traces, source code paths, and system behavior.
- Design and implement custom event sets tailored to workload-specific performance characterization.

## Qualifications

Required Qualifications

- Bachelor’s, Master’s, or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related field.
- 8+ years of experience in system performance engineering or related roles.
- Strong understanding of computer architecture, including:
- CPU pipelines, execution engines, and memory hierarchy
- Interrupt architectures (e.g., GICv3/GICv4, APIC concepts)
- MMU, virtual memory, and page table structures
- Deep expertise with Linux performance tooling:
- perf
- eBPF / BCC / bpftrace
- ftrace / trace-cmd
- Proficiency in C/C++, Python, and shell scripting for performance tooling and automation.

## Preferred Qualifications

- Hands-on experience with ARM PMUv3 on Cortex-A55/A76/A78 or Neoverse platforms.
- Experience with one or more virtualization stacks:
- KVM/QEMU
- Xen
- seL4 or other RTOS/hypervisor environments

## Benefits

Along with competitive pay, as a full-time NIO employee, you are eligible for the following benefits on the first day you join NIO:

- Anthem Blue Cross, HSA, and Kaiser HMO medical plans with $0 for Employee Only Coverage.
- Dental (including orthodontic coverage) and vision plan. Both provide options with a $0 paycheck contribution covering you and your eligible dependents.
- Company Paid HSA (Health Savings Account) Contribution when enrolled in the High Deductible Anthem Blue Cross medical plan
- Healthcare and Dependent Care Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA)
- 401(k) with Brokerage Link option
- Company paid Basic Life, AD&D, short-term and long-term disability insurance
- Employee Assistance Program
- Sick and Vacation time
- 13 Paid Holidays a year
- Paid Parental Leave for first 8 weeks at full pay (eligible after 90 days of employment with NIO)
- Paid Disability Leave for first 6 weeks at full pay (eligible after 90 days of employment with NIO)
- Voluntary benefits including: Voluntary Life and AD&D options for you, your spouse/domestic partner and dependent child(ren), pet insurance
- Commuter benefits
- Mobile Cell Phone Credit
- Free lunch and snacks
- Onsite gym
- Employee discounts and perks program

## Compensation

The US base salary range for this full-time position is $192,100.00 - $249,600.00.

- Within the range, individual pay is determined by work location and additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training.

- Please note that the compensation details listed in US role postings reflect the base salary only. It does not include discretionary bonus, equity, or benefits.

## About NIO USA, INC

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: NIO USA, INC is the American subsidiary of NIO Inc., a Chinese pioneer in premium smart electric vehicles, focused on R&D, digital systems, and expanding the NIO ecosystem in the US.
- **Entity Type**: Public (NYSE: NIO; also listed on HKEX and SGX)
- **Headquarters**: San Jose, California, USA (primary US office)
- **Founded**: 2014 (parent company NIO Inc.)
- **Founders**: William Li (Chairman & CEO)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Automotive (premium smart electric vehicles)
- **Target customers**: B2C consumers seeking premium EVs; also B2B through Battery-as-a-Service (BaaS) and NIO Power infrastructure
- **Mission**: “Blue Sky Coming” – Shaping a sustainable and brighter future together; to build a user enterprise where innovative technology meets experience excellence

## Products & Services
- **NIO Vehicles**: Premium smart electric SUVs, sedans, and crossovers (e.g., ET7, ES6, EC6) with advanced assisted driving and digital cockpit features.
- **Battery-as-a-Service (BaaS)**: Vehicle-battery separation model allowing battery subscription, swapping, and upgrades – recognized as a 2021 Fast Company World Changing Ideas award winner.
- **NIO Power**: Network of battery swap stations, charging stations, Power Mobile (mobile charging), and a cloud-based power service system for holistic energy management.
- **NIO Service**: One-stop service system including Service Guardian and nationwide service network for maintenance and roadside assistance.
- **NIO Community**: User-driven ecosystem with over 600,000 users across 2,400+ communities, organizing activities and fostering shared growth.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly available in provided data (public company; market cap fluctuates; refer to NYSE: NIO)
- **Key Metric**: Over 9,600 patents filed/obtained as of December 2025; R&D and production centers across 14 countries; sales/service in 24 countries and regions.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Not detailed in search results; NIO is publicly traded with institutional investors; strategic partners include battery supply chain and technology firms.
- **Growth Signals**: Expansion into Middle East, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and Central America; launch of sub-brands ONVO and firefly; continuous hiring in US R&D (San Jose) and Europe (Munich, Oslo, Budapest, Oxford, etc.).

## Competitive Advantages
- **Battery swapping technology**: 3-minute swap without leaving the car, with battery health checks – a unique differentiator vs. traditional charging.
- **User community and NIO House**: Physical and digital community spaces that build brand loyalty and retention.
- **Vertical integration**: In-house R&D across 12 technology domains (Full Stack) including autonomous driving, digital systems, and powertrain.
- **First automotive company listed on NYSE, HKEX, SGX** – strong capital market credibility.

## Strategic Focus
- **Global expansion**: Increasing presence in Europe, Middle East, and Americas; building sales and service networks.
- **Autonomous driving & AI**: Continued investment in assisted/intelligent driving, AI robotics, and LLM optimization (evident from US job openings).
- **Battery technology**: Advancing BaaS, solid-state batteries, and swapping infrastructure to reduce range anxiety.
- **Brand diversification**: Sub-brands ONVO and firefly to target different price segments.

## Why Work Here
- **Innovative environment**: Work on cutting-edge EV, autonomous driving, AI, and battery technology at a company that challenges traditional automotive.
- **Benefits**: Health/dental/vision insurance, FSA/HSA, 401K with RSUs and annual bonus, paid vacation, sick leave, maternity/paternity leave, flexible hours, remote work options, free lunch/snacks, gym discount, commuter program, and mobile phone allowance.
- **Global presence**: Opportunity to work in San Jose (US), Munich, Oslo, Budapest, Oxford, Netherlands, and other locations.
- **Engineering culture**: Emphasis on R&D – roles include Hypervisor/Linux Kernel Developer, Simulation Software Engineer, AI Infrastructure Engineer, LLM Algorithmic Optimization Engineer, and AI Robotics Researcher.
- **Award-winning**: BaaS recognized by Fast Company; NOMI AI won 2021 Artificial Intelligence award; Firmware-Over-The-Air won 2021 DEVIES Award.

## Sources
1. [nio.com/careers](https://www.nio.com/careers)
2. [nio.com/careers/jobs](https://www.nio.com/careers/jobs)
3. [us.nio.com/careers](http://us.nio.com/careers)
4. [nio.com/about](https://www.nio.com/about?noredirect=)

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