Software Development Engineer 2

Alpha Consulting Corp. is seeking a Software Development Engineer 2 to diagnose DirectX 12 game performance issues by analyzing GPU/CPU traces. The role involves communicating findings to engineers and requires strong skills in performance analysis and programming.

Responsibilities:

• Reproduce reported DirectX 12 performance issues from data produced by our testing lab
• Capture GPU/CPU profiles and traces using tools such as PIX (timing captures), GPUView/ETW, and vendor profilers (e.g., Radeon GPU Profiler) to identify bottlenecks (GPU-bound vs. CPU-bound, synchronization, shader occupancy, pipelining, etc.)
• Analyze traces and performance counters to isolate the likely root cause and propose actionable next steps
• Create clear performance write-ups with reproduction steps, captures, metrics, and a concise summary of suspected hotspots
• Partner with graphics driver and runtime engineers to validate hypotheses, test fixes, and confirm performance improvements and regressions

Requirements:

• Understanding of real-time rendering fundamentals and the GPU graphics pipeline (draw calls, state changes, shaders, textures, buffers)
• Understanding of GPU architecture basics (waves/warps, occupancy, caches, memory bandwidth) and shader ISA at a high level
• DirectX 12 familiarity (core concepts such as command queues/lists, descriptor heaps, resource states/barriers) and basic shader concepts in HLSL & SPIRV
• Hands-on experience with profiling tools (PIX, RGP, GPUView, WPA/WPR) and interpreting timing/counter data
• Programming skills in C/C++ with ability to read and reason about performance-sensitive code
• Comfortable working in Windows environments (command line basics, driver/runtime builds) and strong written communication for bug reports and triage summaries
• Comfortable working in Linux (shell, services, and basic scripting)
• Scripting for automation (Python, PowerShell, or Bash) and basic data analysis (CSV, spreadsheets, simple plots)
• Exposure to Windows graphics stack and debugging concepts (WDDM, DXGI, ETW providers, driver symbol debugging)
• Bachelor's degree in computer science, software engineering or relevant field required
• 2-4 years experience required
• Prior work experience at client or in client's Industry
• Applicants must be able to work directly for Artech on W2
• Familiarity with graphics and performance analysis tooling
• Hardware architecture knowledge
• Experience identifying performance bottlenecks through trace collection and analysis