Principal Application Engineer- Emulation

Company Overview

Synopsys is the leader in engineering solutions from silicon to systems, enabling customers to rapidly innovate AI‑powered products. We deliver industry‑leading silicon design, IP, simulation and analysis solutions, and design services, partnering closely with customers across a wide range of industries to maximize their R&D capability and productivity.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Lead technical engagements with customers deploying ZeBu or other emulation platforms, diagnosing performance bottlenecks, debug issues, and workflow inefficiencies that block verification progress.
• Design emulation strategies for complex SoC and ASIC projects, defining partitioning approaches, testbench integration, and bring‑up sequences that work under real project constraints.
• Collaborate directly with Synopsys R&D teams to escalate product gaps, influence roadmap priorities, and validate new features against customer use cases before they ship.
• Develop and deliver technical training sessions, workshops, and best‑practice guides for customer engineering teams and internal application engineers.
• Troubleshoot critical emulation failures in live customer environments, working across hardware, RTL, testbench, and software layers to isolate root cause and restore productivity.
• Mentor junior applications engineers on emulation methodologies, debugging techniques, and customer‑engagement strategies, building the team’s technical depth and customer impact.

The Impact You Will Have

• Accelerate verification closure for customers building AI accelerators, automotive SoCs, and hyperscale processors, cutting months off their schedules through smarter emulation strategies.
• Expand ZeBu adoption across new customer segments by proving out use cases, building reference flows, and demonstrating measurable ROI in real project contexts.
• Shape the emulation product roadmap by translating customer pain points into actionable R&D requirements that improve performance, usability, and scalability for the entire user base.
• Build long‑term technical partnerships with lead architects and verification managers at top semiconductor companies, becoming their trusted advisor for emulation and verification strategy.
• Reduce customer escalations and support load by creating reusable methodologies, automation scripts, and documentation that solve recurring problems once instead of repeatedly.
• Strengthen Synopsys’ reputation as the emulation platform that runs fast enough and stable enough to be the backbone of verification for the hardest chips in the industry.

What You’ll Need

• 10+ years of hands‑on experience with hardware emulation platforms such as Synopsys ZeBu, Mentor Veloce, or Cadence Palladium, including deployment, debug, and performance optimization.
• Deep proficiency in hardware description languages (Verilog, SystemVerilog, VHDL) with the ability to read, debug, and optimize RTL for emulation.
• Strong understanding of verification methodologies including UVM, constrained‑random testing, and coverage‑driven verification in emulation environments.
• Solid grasp of SoC and ASIC architecture, subsystem integration, interconnect protocols, memory hierarchies, and software/hardware co‑verification flows.
• Experience with scripting languages (Python, Perl, or TCL) for automation, flow development, and data analysis in emulation and verification contexts.
• Proven ability to debug complex interactions across RTL, testbenches, emulation hardware, and embedded software, isolating issues that span multiple domains.
• Background in customer‑facing technical roles (field applications engineering, customer support engineering, or technical consulting) with a track record of solving hard problems under pressure.

Who You Are

• You can walk into a war room where emulation is down and the tapeout is in six weeks, assess the real problem, and focus the team on the right fix.
• You explain complex emulation partitioning trade‑offs succinctly to verification leads while preserving nuance.
• You are the go‑to person when problems are ambiguous, pressure is high, and the path forward is unclear.
• You push back on customer requests that won’t solve their problem, doing so in a way that builds trust.
• You stay current on verification trends, emulation technology, and industry shifts out of genuine curiosity.

The Team You’ll Be Part Of

You will join a dynamic and diverse team of principal engineers and applications specialists focused on delivering world‑class emulation and verification solutions. The team collaborates closely with customers, product R&D, and other engineering groups, fostering innovation and driving technical excellence to shape the future of hardware verification.

Job reference: LI‑CM‑1