Principal Compiler & Workload Portability Architect

Section: Overview Africa Web Services (AfWS) is seeking an experienced Principal Compiler & Workload Portability Architect to lead the architecture and delivery of a customer-ready One-Click workload portability system.

Section: Role summary This is a high-level international specialist engagement for an engineer who can work across compilers, operating systems, cross-compilation, workload analysis and heterogeneous compute environments — turning complex portability requirements into a reliable, testable and commercially usable engineering system.

The role is particularly suited to senior engineers with deep experience in LLVM/GCC, RISC-V, cross-compilation, ABI/toolchain design and workload portability.

Section: Mission You will own the technical architecture required to deliver a customer-ready One-Click portability system within a clearly defined compatibility envelope.

This is not a generic research prototype. You will be responsible for translating complex portability requirements into an engineering system with clear compatibility rules, reproducible builds, defined acceptance criteria and production-oriented delivery.

Section: Key Responsibilities

• Lead the end-to-end portability architecture, from workload intake through conversion and export.
• Define Green, Amber and Red compatibility rules for supported workloads.
• Establish canonical source packages and conversion manifests.
• Develop correctness frameworks covering bitwise, semantic and FP-model considerations.
• Lead LLVM/GCC and cross-compilation workflows, including x86-64 to RISC-V.
• Identify and isolate unsupported proprietary code and portability blockers.
• Design interfaces between the portability planner, AI systems and K3 runtime.
• Own the reference workload catalogue and acceptance-testing framework.
• Investigate portability defects and make architecture-level decisions.
• Mentor the Platform Engineer and transfer the required technical knowledge to the permanent team.

Section: Requirements

• 8+ years of systems, compiler or platform engineering experience.
• Deep knowledge of LLVM/GCC, cross-compilation, ABI, libc, Linux toolchains and build systems.
• Production experience with RISC-V is preferred.
• Mandatory experience with ARM or another non-x86 architecture.
• Strong container, dependency-reconstruction and reproducible-build experience.
• Strong C/C++, Python and native-extension knowledge.
• Ability to establish robust technical acceptance criteria and communicate them clearly with stakeholders.