Technical Lead - System Tests & Diagnostics Engineer

About the Role

Graphcore is one of the world's leading innovators in Artificial Intelligence compute, developing hardware, software and systems infrastructure to unlock the next generation of AI breakthroughs. As part of the SoftBank Group, Graphcore shares a bold vision to enable Artificial Super Intelligence and ensure its benefits are accessible to everyone.

We are seeking a highly skilled System Tests & Diagnostics Engineer to develop, extend, and integrate specialized silicon validation and diagnostics tools for next-generation AI SoCs. Unlike traditional validation roles focused on executing test plans, this position is responsible for developing the diagnostic software and stress tools that expose hardware failures, characterize silicon behavior, and improve platform observability throughout bring-up and validation. You will work closely with Arm engineers to understand and extend existing diagnostics technologies while developing Graphcore-specific capabilities for future AI hardware.

Responsibilities

• Learn and extend existing Arm diagnostics tools to support Graphcore's AI platform.
• Develop specialized diagnostics and stress-testing software for CPU, memory, interconnect, PCIe, and other system components.
• Build reusable validation utilities that integrate into the existing validation framework.
• Develop tools that expose intermittent hardware failures including silent data corruption, timing-related issues, and hardware instability.
• Design configurable diagnostic applications supporting multiple silicon revisions, platforms, and execution environments.
• Develop automation for executing diagnostics across server and rack-scale validation environments.
• Design configuration-driven diagnostics supporting scalable parameterization and workload variation.
• Collaborate with hardware architects to understand new hardware capabilities and identify missing diagnostics.
• Work closely with firmware and validation teams to improve hardware observability.
• Debug low-level hardware, firmware, operating system, and driver interactions.
• Analyze diagnostic output and improve fault isolation methodologies.
• Develop software that enables engineers to reproduce and investigate difficult hardware failures.
• Contribute reusable libraries and utilities that improve engineering productivity across multiple validation teams.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
• 12+ years of experience developing hardware diagnostics, system validation software, firmware validation tools, or low-level systems software.
• Strong software development skills in Python and C/C++.
• Strong Linux systems experience.
• Strong understanding of modern server platform architecture, including how CPU, memory, PCIe, storage, networking, firmware, operating system, and device drivers interact within a complete system.
• Experience debugging hardware/software interactions across multiple layers of the platform.
• Experience developing diagnostics, stress testing, or hardware validation software.
• Experience with server platforms, embedded systems, or SoC validation.
• Strong analytical and debugging skills.
• Experience collaborating across hardware, firmware, software, and validation teams.
• Excellent communication and problem-solving skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Arm-based server platforms
• AI accelerators or high-performance computing systems
• Silent Data Corruption (SDC) testing
• Hardware stress testing
• Power transient analysis
• Hardware fault injection methodologies
• Firmware validation
• Silicon bring-up
• Performance characterization
• Hardware telemetry and observability
• BMC firmware or server management
• RAS (Reliability, Availability, Serviceability) technologies
• Validate across subsystems: CPU scaling and cache behavior; memory (DDR/HBM) bandwidth, latency, and NUMA effects; interconnect contention under multi-core load; PCIe I/O throughput, latency, and multi-device scenarios; high-speed I/O validation

What Success Looks Like

• Extend existing diagnostics technologies to support new Graphcore hardware.
• Develop new diagnostics tools for emerging hardware capabilities.
• Build reusable software components that integrate seamlessly with the existing validation framework.
• Improve hardware observability and root-cause isolation.
• Detect and characterize intermittent hardware failures that traditional validation techniques cannot expose.
• Deliver configurable diagnostics that scale across multiple platforms and silicon revisions.
• Work effectively across hardware, firmware, validation, and diagnostics teams to continuously improve platform quality.

Why Join Graphcore?

This role provides a unique opportunity to work at the intersection of hardware architecture, diagnostics, and software engineering while helping define how next-generation AI systems are validated. Rather than maintaining an existing validation framework, you will develop the specialized diagnostics and stress tools that make that framework valuable. Your work will directly influence hardware quality, silicon bring-up, and long-term platform reliability for future AI infrastructure.

Benefits

• Medical, dental and vision coverage
• Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs)
• Health Savings Accounts (HSAs)
• Disability and life insurance
• 401(k) retirement plan
• Commuter benefits
• Wellness services
• Employee Assistance Programme (EAP)
• Flexible working