Senior ASIC Engineer - Post Silicon Validation
Cisco SystemsJob Title
Senior ASIC Engineer - Post Silicon Validation
Role Summary
Join the Silicon One team to perform post-silicon bring-up, validation, and debug for high-performance ASICs used in routing, switching, and wireless products. The role focuses on establishing bring-up infrastructure, executing functional and performance validation, and providing actionable feedback to design, firmware, and production teams.
Experience Level
Senior - typically 7+ years of relevant experience (see Education Requirements for degree/experience alternatives).
Responsibilities
Primary responsibilities involve planning and executing post-silicon validation activities and collaborating across hardware and firmware teams.
- Plan and set up silicon bring-up infrastructure: system boot, initialization, and ASIC power-on.
- Prepare and execute validation test plans for IP, subsystem, and full-chip functional and performance testing, including stress and corner-case tests.
- Develop and extend validation infrastructure, automation, and test suites; implement result capture, analysis, and regression frameworks.
- Root-cause and resolve functional and electrical issues in collaboration with design, verification, and board teams.
- Use lab instrumentation (oscilloscopes, analyzers, traffic generators) for validation and characterization.
- Work with RTL, DFT, ATE, firmware, and system architecture teams to transition from pre-silicon verification to post-silicon validation.
- Provide feedback on test escapes, yield issues, and silicon errata to influence silicon revisions and firmware/driver workarounds.
Requirements
Must-have technical skills and experience for day-one contribution.
- Prior experience in post-silicon validation, bring-up, and debug of ASICs.
- Experience with early silicon bring-up and debug workflows.
- Experience bringing up peripheral interfaces (I2C, SPI, JTAG) and protocols such as PCIe and Ethernet.
- Experience with firmware, bootloaders, and low-level silicon debug environments.
- Proficiency in C and Python and scripting for validation automation.
- Experience using lab instrumentation for measurement and characterization.
- Ability to develop validation automation and regression frameworks and to analyze captured results.
Nice-to-have:
- Experience with memory subsystems (HBM, DDR).
- Electrical and thermal performance characterization experience.
- SystemVerilog/UVM and emulation-based verification experience.
Education Requirements
Bachelor's degree in Electrical or Computer Engineering with 7+ years' experience; or a Master's degree with 4+ years' experience; or a PhD with 1+ years' experience. (Degree in Electrical/Computer Engineering or closely related technical field; experience-based alternatives specified.)
About the Company
Company: Cisco Systems
Headquarters: San Jose, CA, United States
Cisco Systems is a global technology company that designs and sells networking hardware, telecommunications equipment, software, and services. It provides enterprise and service-provider networking, security, collaboration, and optical communications solutions (including Acacia Communications technologies for high-speed optical interconnects).
