Sr. Picture Quality Architect, System Architecture - Sunnyvale

Job Description

The Amazon Devices team designs high-profile consumer electronics, including the best-selling Amazon Echo, FireTV, Fire Tablets, Kindle, and Astro family of products. We are looking for a motivated individual contributor with a solid background in video processing and picture quality algorithm development and experience with implementing these algorithms in silicon. Ideal candidate will have great communication skills and the passion to collaborate with a cross-functional team to drive picture quality and system architecture for our FireTV and Echo Show products.

Key job responsibilities
As a Senior Picture Quality (PQ) Architect, you will be responsible for defining the picture quality for display-first consumer products such as TVs, Echo Show, and streaming media player devices, as well as a range of new concepts not yet announced. You will serve as the lead technical point of contact that the product management and business teams rely on to interpret and clarify the product concept's desired user experience and requirements on picture quality. You will define the picture quality taste for each product and work closely with the PQ tuning team to deliver the differentiated and novel picture quality for products. In the process of architecture definition, you will need to conduct a comprehensive analysis of both in-house and third-party solutions related to specific PQ features and propose PQ algorithm development plans to improve existing or new PQ features. You will have solid hands-on background to develop desired algorithms in collaboration with SW and RTL developers for implementation. You will drive key design decisions such as right blend of PQ features to supports a set of use cases for a specific product, and document the proposals and decisions in a PQ architecture specification document that will provide relevant design guidance for the engineering and PQ tuning team.
Besides direct product PQ architecture tasks, you will track market trends and standards in domain of multimedia pipelines, video processing, display processing, and interface directly with silicon and IP vendors, and define roadmaps for the whole organization on the next generation video picture quality IPs and standards. You will serve as a direct contact for senior leadership for this technology domain and regularly present the roadmap updates to executives. You will dive deep into video pipelines and interfaces, define specs for the next-gen silicon platforms and work with our silicon vendors to implement them. You will work on concepts that may have an existing reference architecture as well as emerging product ideas that do not have any precedence. As the product is developed from initial concept, prototype development, validation to production you stay engaged as the system technical lead to ensure the product requirements are being met. Throughout this process you work closely with multi-disciplinary groups including Program Managers, Software Developers, Silicon and IP architects and designers, ML Scientists, etc.


A day in the life
• Gather business and functional product requirements on Picture Quality for TV product from external/internal customers, and translate these requirements into technical specifications
• Perform Picture Quality analysis, through proof of concepts on existing platform or new platform.
• Define and develop PQ algorithms that will leverage and distinguish the PQ of Amazon’s products
• Present architecture tradeoffs and recommendations to senior management (VP level)
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to develop and implement PQ algorithms
• Drive technology roadmaps in video and display SoC technologies to foster innovation and meet the needs of the long-term product roadmap.
• Provide design and validation reviews for other engineers, including feedback on architecture and design issues, as well as integration, performance and scalability.
• Work closely with silicon and IP suppliers and influence their roadmaps to meet Amazon Lab126 needs.


About the team
The system architecture team is responsible for architecting Amazon Lab126 products including Echo, Fire Tablets, FireTV, Kindle eReaders, Hearables, Wearables, and IoT products. The team also owns the chipset and IP technology roadmaps and drives strategies that enable reuse and scale across Amazon devices. The team is comprised of architects with varied hardware and software backgrounds. We are always on the lookout for capable architects who can raise the bar and add technical expertise and depth to drive architectures for next-gen devices and emerging concepts.
Come and be a part of the system architecture team in Lab126 Hardware Architecture and technology! Employees who have experience with consumer electronics devices and multimedia pipelines, video and image signal processing, PQ algorithm development, or similar and would like to contribute at the architecture level to the exciting Lab126 roadmap are encouraged to apply.

We are open to hiring candidates to work out of one of the following locations:

Sunnyvale, CA, USA

Basic Qualifications:

• Bachelor degree in Electrical/Electronic Engineering, Computer Science or related field
• 5+ years of industry experience in domain of video/display processing, PQ processing & customization with proven documents (papers and U.S. patents)
• Strong communication skills & ability to clearly document and present technical design
• Experience with Video codecs, video algorithm development, display pipelines and/or multimedia IPs and architectures
• Experience with algorithm development and programming in MATLAB, C, C++ and python.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Picture Quality expert in defining the right combination of TV PQ feature for various use cases
• 8+ years of experience developing TV processing algorithms (contrast/detail/color enhancement, image interpolation, various video denoising, deblurring, super-resolution, color correction, compression artifacts reduction, super resolution, frame rate conversion, etc.) including 3+ years of practical experiences with HDR10/10+/HLG video processing
• Experience using objective methods for picture quality assessment
• Familiarity with AI/ML based approaches to TV processing and compression, super resolution, etc. is preferred
• Experience architecting multimedia systems with display, graphics and video codecs features
• Familiarity with heterogenous SoC architectures


Amazon is committed to a diverse and inclusive workplace. Amazon is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, protected veteran status, disability, age, or other legally protected status. For individuals with disabilities who would like to request an accommodation, please visit https://www.amazon.jobs/en/disability/us.

Our compensation reflects the cost of labor across several US geographic markets. The base pay for this position ranges from $127,300/year in our lowest geographic market up to $247,600/year in our highest geographic market. Pay is based on a number of factors including market location and may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. Amazon is a total compensation company. Dependent on the position offered, equity, sign-on payments, and other forms of compensation may be provided as part of a total compensation package, in addition to a full range of medical, financial, and/or other benefits. For more information, please visit https://www.aboutamazon.com/workplace/employee-benefits. This position will remain posted until filled. Applicants should apply via our internal or external career site.