Silicon Validation/Emulation Design Engineer

Job Title

Silicon Validation/Emulation Design Engineer

Role Summary

Work on pre-silicon validation and emulation for Wireless SoCs and ARM-based subsystems. Own development and maintenance of Cadence Palladium (or equivalent) emulation environments to enable early system integration and hardware validation prior to tape-out.

Collaborate with SoC architects, RTL designers, and verification engineers to define emulation requirements, debug complex issues, and improve emulation processes and tooling.

Experience Level

Senior — role expects substantial industry experience; the posting specifies a minimum of 10 years of relevant experience.

Responsibilities

Deliver and support emulation platforms and workflows to enable system- and IP-level validation, debug, and performance optimization.

• Build and maintain Palladium emulation build flows, compile flows, netlist preparation, memory modeling, and clock/reset configuration.
• Perform system-level and IP-level debug and root-cause analysis on the emulation platform.
• Drive emulation model performance optimization through compile tuning, partitioning, and platform configuration.
• Develop automation, scripts, and tools to improve build efficiency, debug turnaround, and platform utilization.
• Define and document reusable debug methodologies, procedures, and best practices.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to meet emulation deliverables and program milestones.

Requirements

Key technical skills and experience required or strongly expected for successful performance in this role.

Must-have

• Proven experience with Cadence Palladium or equivalent emulation platforms (e.g., Synopsys ZeBu), including platform bring-up and compile optimization.
• Strong debugging skills for system-level and IP-level issues on emulation platforms; experience with waveform analysis, signal probing, assertions, and transactors.
• Experience with emulation compile flows: synthesis for emulation, memory compilation, clock modeling, and I/O abstraction.
• Solid understanding of RTL design concepts, SoC architectures, ARM-based subsystems, and standard bus protocols (AXI, AHB, APB).
• Experience developing and maintaining automation scripts (Python, Tcl, Perl, Shell) to streamline emulation workflows.
• Familiarity with version control systems (Git, Perforce) and CI/CD integration for emulation flows.
• Strong analytical problem-solving skills and effective cross-team communication.

Nice-to-have

• Experience with Wireless SoC applications (Wi‑Fi, Bluetooth, cellular).
• Deep experience optimizing emulation model performance at large SoC scale.

Education Requirements

Bachelor of Science (BS) degree and a minimum of 10 years of relevant industry experience.

About the Company

Company: Apple

Headquarters: Cupertino, California, United States

Apple is a multinational technology company that designs, manufactures, and sells consumer electronics, software, and online services. Known for its innovative products such as the iPhone, Mac computers, and iPad, Apple emphasizes a strong commitment to high-quality design and user experience.