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Azul is seeking a Staff Compiler Performance Engineer to lead the technical direction of Falcon, the optimizing just-in-time (JIT) compiler in Azul Platform Prime. Falcon compiles hot Java bytecode into highly optimized machine code and is built on LLVM, currently running in production at large enterprises.
In this role, you will be the senior technical voice on a distributed team of compiler experts and a key partner to runtime, garbage collection, and product teams. You will define the performance strategy for Falcon by identifying the largest opportunities across benchmarks and customer workloads and translating them into a technical roadmap. You will lead the design of complex, cross-cutting optimizations in the optimizer and code generator, and design the interfaces between the compiler, runtime, and garbage collector.
Key responsibilities include making architectural decisions on the Falcon optimization pipeline, compile-time budget, and tiering strategy; leading enablement of Falcon on new hardware platforms and Azul products; mentoring senior engineers and reviewing critical designs and code; setting standards for performance methodology and validation; and representing Azul in the LLVM community by driving upstream design discussions and contributions that benefit managed language compilers.
This is not a compiler front-end role and not building a compiler from scratch—Falcon is mature and production-proven. You will focus on identifying and delivering the next significant performance gains through strategic optimization work.
REQUIREMENTS:
- 8+ years of professional experience developing optimizing compilers or JIT compilers
- Track record of technical leadership: owning the design of major compiler components or optimization frameworks used in production
- Expert C++ skills and experience in large, long-lived codebases
- Deep expertise in compiler optimization and code generation, with clear understanding of tradeoffs between peak performance, compile time, warmup, and code size
- Expert performance analysis skills down to the microarchitecture level
NICE TO HAVE:
- Recognized contributions to LLVM or another major compiler (code owner, maintainer, or author of significant upstream work)
- Deep experience with JIT compilers for managed languages (HotSpot C2, Graal, V8, .NET RyuJIT, or similar)
- Experience working closely with runtime and GC teams on speculation, deoptimization, and barrier design
