Principal Design Verification Engineer

Job Title

Principal Design Verification Engineer

Role Summary

Join the AI Silicon Engineering SoC Design Verification team within Microsoft Silicon, Cloud Hardware, and Infrastructure Engineering (SCHIE). The role focuses on designing and executing verification environments and tests for AI accelerators and SoCs across pre-silicon and post-silicon stages.

Experience Level

Senior - this role requires multi‑year advanced experience (see Education Requirements for degree/experience mappings). Typical hire has 8+ years of relevant engineering experience or equivalent with advanced degrees.

Responsibilities

Primary responsibilities include verification strategy, test development, and cross-team collaboration.

• Design and implement complex verification environments and tests for IP, subsystem, chip, and system levels (pre-silicon and post-silicon).
• Work with architects and design engineers to produce verification plans and ensure feature coverage.
• Develop verification components such as scoreboards, sequences, constraints, assertions, and functional coverage models.
• Debug and triage failures in testbenches, simulations, and emulation runs.
• Create scripts and Makefiles to scale and automate verification flows; apply software engineering practices (code reviews, CI, Agile).
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams across sites and geographies.

Requirements

Must-have technical skills and experience. Degree requirements are summarized separately under Education Requirements.

• Proven experience in pre-silicon functional verification and coverage closure at block, chip, or system level.
• Strong knowledge of verification methodology and tools: SystemVerilog, UVM, assertions, stimulus generation.
• Experience creating verification environments, testbenches, and reference models; familiarity with emulation and FPGA-based validation.
• Proficiency in debugging simulation/emulation failures and root-cause analysis.
• Scripting and automation skills (Python, Perl, Ruby, Bash) and ability to develop scalable Makefile-based flows.
• Familiarity with firmware, secure/non-secure boot flows, and embedded hardware validation.
• Ability to meet security and export-control screening requirements.

Nice-to-have:

• Experience with CPU or graphics core verification and hardware design/synthesizable RTL coding (Verilog/VHDL).
• Software development experience in C/C++ and experience with hardware emulation or FPGAs.

Education Requirements

Degree and equivalent-experience options stated by the employer: Doctorate (EE, CE, CS, or related) + 3+ years technical engineering experience; OR Master’s (EE, CE, CS, or related) + 6+ years; OR Bachelor’s (EE, CE, CS, or related) + 8+ years; OR equivalent experience. Preferred: BS/MS in Electrical, Computer, or Software Engineering.

About the Company

Company: Microsoft

Headquarters: Redmond, Washington, United States

Microsoft is a global technology company that develops and sells software, services, devices, and solutions. Known for its Windows operating system, Office suite, and Azure cloud platform, Microsoft aims to empower individuals and organizations around the world to achieve more. The company fosters a culture of innovation and inclusion, focusing on delivering trusted experiences to customers and partners globally.