Lead Software Engineer: AI for Hardware Verification

Job Title

Lead Software Engineer - AI for Hardware Verification

Role Summary

Lead development of AI-enabled software for emulation and prototyping workflows on the HSV Software team (SVG group) in San Jose. The role designs and implements LLM-based agents, RAG workflows, and automation services to speed design bring-up, verification, debug, and validation, and coordinates across engineering teams to integrate these features into product architecture.

Experience Level

Senior. Employer indicates senior-level expectations; see Education Requirements for the employer's years-of-experience guidance tied to degree level.

Responsibilities

Primary technical and leadership responsibilities:

• Design and implement AI-enabled software components for emulation and prototyping workflows, balancing reliability, maintainability, security, latency, cost, and product integration.
• Develop LLM-based agents, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) workflows, and automation services to improve design bring-up, verification, debug, and validation.
• Implement secure and responsible AI practices: data protection, access control, prompt-injection awareness, auditability, and safe tool usage when handling sensitive design data.
• Create and run testing, evaluation, and observability workflows: regression tests, retrieval quality checks, model-output review, tracing, and failure analysis.
• Act as a technical resource and mentor for peers and less-experienced engineers; collaborate with internal partners and managers to deliver high-quality AI-enabled software.

Requirements

Key technical must-haves and competencies:

• Strong Python skills and solid software engineering fundamentals: APIs, testing, debugging, maintainability, Unix/Linux environments, and distributed development workflows.
• Hands-on experience building AI-enabled applications, agentic workflows, or automation services using LLM APIs, open-source models, enterprise AI platforms, and orchestration tools (examples: LangGraph, LangChain, AutoGen, CrewAI, or similar).
• Practical understanding of modern RAG and agentic AI patterns: retrieval, chunking, embeddings, vector/hybrid search, reranking, tool calling, workflow orchestration, human-in-the-loop review, and traceability.
• Ability to evaluate, secure, and debug AI product behavior using golden datasets, regression tests, hallucination checks, prompt and retrieval analysis, observability traces, and quality metrics.

Nice-to-have:

• Experience with version control systems and modern CI/CD practices.
• Experience with additional languages such as C++, Tcl, or JavaScript/TypeScript.
• Knowledge or practical experience with design verification, emulation, prototyping, hardware-assisted debug workflows, or EDA/VLSI (Verilog, SystemVerilog, VHDL).
• Exposure to AI application security practices (prompt-injection mitigation, secure tool integration, input/output validation, secure handling of design data).

Education Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or equivalent practical experience. Employer guidance: typically 4+ years of experience with a Bachelor's degree, 2+ years with a Master’s, or PhD-level preparation in a related software development field.

About the Company

Company: Cadence Design Systems

Headquarters: San Jose, California, USA

Cadence Design Systems is a global electronic design automation company that provides software, hardware, and intellectual property for designing advanced semiconductor chips. With over 25 years in the industry, Cadence is known for its innovative technology solutions and has been recognized by Fortune Magazine as one of the 100 Best Companies to Work For. The company is dedicated to solving complex technical challenges in order to enable customers to create revolutionary products and experiences.