Sony Interactive Entertainment
Senior Software Engineer
Sony Interactive Entertainment, Aliso Viejo, California, United States, 92656
Why PlayStation?
PlayStation isn't just the Best Place to Play - it's also the Best Place to Work. Today, we're recognized as a global leader in entertainment producing The PlayStation family of products and services including PlayStation5, PlayStation4, PlayStationVR, PlayStationPlus, acclaimed PlayStation software titles from PlayStation Studios, and more.
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.
The PlayStation brand falls under Sony Interactive Entertainment, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sony Group Corporation.
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.
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 !
Please refer to our Candidate Privacy Noticefor 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.
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.
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 !
Please refer to our Candidate Privacy Noticefor 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.