Silicon Validation Engineer

Role Overview

This position supports the development and validation of silicon chips that power cloud services and AI workloads. The role involves hands-on silicon validation activities for chip development, focusing on testing and validating silicon hardware used in critical infrastructure. The work is performed onsite in a lab environment and requires a high degree of technical expertise.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop C and C++ based test content, low-level drivers, and custom firmware at the subsystem and SoC levels.
• Extend the compile and build flow to support custom firmware-style tests.
• Serve as a technical owner for the team's FPGA prototyping platforms (e.g., HAPS or Xilinx), creating board images and bit files, and designing custom FPGA RTL for protocol interfaces.
• Develop and extend custom Python tooling to interface with the FPGA platform.
• Debug FPGA and post-silicon issues using tools such as JTAG debuggers, logic analyzers, oscilloscopes, and multimeters.
• Drive post-silicon bring-up and validation in the lab, running validation suites on first silicon and debugging platform issues.
• Root-cause failing post-silicon tests to closure by collecting and analyzing scan dumps for low-level issues.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field.
• 5-7 years of relevant experience.
• Hands-on experience in SoC verification, FPGA/emulation platform bring-up, and post-silicon validation.
• Expertise in C/C++, Python scripting, and SystemVerilog-based verification environments.
• Experience with industry-standard protocols such as AMBA, JTAG, SPI, I2C/I3C, and USB.
• Proficiency with hardware debug tools like JTAG debuggers, logic analyzers, and oscilloscopes.
• Embedded software development and hardware debug capabilities.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience developing C and C++ test content for subsystem and SoC verification, including bare-metal and firmware-style tests.
• Experience bringing up and maintaining FPGA prototyping or emulation platforms.
• Proficiency in a scripting language such as Python, Perl, or Ruby for test automation.
• In-depth knowledge of verification principles, testbench architecture, and stimulus generation.
• Experience with low-level and embedded software, including assembly, startup code, and linker scripts.
• Familiarity with collaborating across architecture, design, firmware, and validation teams.
• A strong understanding of silicon and/or computer architecture.

Work Environment

This position requires the candidate to work onsite daily. Candidates with a history of multiple short-term contracts without sufficient explanation may not be a fit for this role.