Silicon Validation Engineer, Software

Job Title

Silicon Validation Engineer, Software

Role Summary

Develop firmware and low-level software to validate Etched's AI/ML accelerator ASICs across their lifecycle: pre-silicon emulation and FPGA prototyping through post-silicon bring-up, characterization, and production ramp. Work includes building validation firmware, test content, automation, and hands-on lab debugging of physical hardware.

Experience Level

Mid-level. Prefer candidates with practical firmware/embedded development experience; 2+ years is desirable but not strictly required.

Responsibilities

Deliver validation firmware, tests, and automation to prove functionality, performance, and reliability of accelerator silicon.

• Design and implement low-level validation firmware in C/C++ usable across emulation and physical silicon.
• Drive early silicon bring-up: boot, initialization, feature enablement, and debug.
• Root-cause and resolve failures spanning firmware, RTL, electrical, protocol, and system levels.
• Build firmware infrastructure: HALs and device drivers for compute units, memory subsystems, and high-speed interfaces.
• Develop and maintain validation automation, result capture, and regression/CI frameworks to run validation at scale.
• Author firmware-driven test plans and coverage metrics; execute functional, performance, and stress/corner-case testing.
• Validate and characterize custom IP blocks and accelerator components on pre- and post-silicon platforms.
• Use lab tooling (JTAG, UART, logic/protocol analyzers) for silicon debug and characterization.
• Collaborate with design, verification, architecture, DFT, and driver teams to transition issues between pre-silicon and post-silicon phases.

Requirements

Core technical skills and experience required to perform the role.

Must-have

• Proficiency in C/C++ for firmware and bare-metal development.
• Proficiency in Python for validation automation and scripting.
• Understanding of SoC/computer architecture: CPU cores, memory subsystems, caches, interconnects.
• Embedded fundamentals: bootloaders, HALs, device drivers, register/interrupt programming, bare-metal or RTOS environments.
• Experience developing and debugging in Linux environments.
• Strong analytical problem-solving and ability to work cross-functionally with hardware and software teams.

Nice-to-have

• Experience with silicon bring-up, JTAG and debuggers (e.g., Lauterbach/GDB), and serial/UART consoles.
• Experience across pre-silicon (emulation, FPGA, RTL simulation) and post-silicon (lab bring-up, characterization) flows.
• Familiarity with high-speed interfaces: PCIe, DDR/LPDDR/HBM, SerDes, or chiplet interconnects.
• Experience building CI/CD validation frameworks, RTOS (FreeRTOS, Zephyr), or RISC-V firmware development.
• Ability to read RTL (Verilog/SystemVerilog) and use lab instruments (oscilloscopes, logic/protocol analyzers, BERTs); signal-integrity awareness.

Education Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field is expected; a Master's degree is a plus.

About the Company

Company: Etched

Headquarters: San Jose, CA, United States

Etched develops purpose-built AI inference ASICs and systems optimized for transformer models, aiming to deliver significantly higher performance, lower cost, and lower latency than GPUs. The company focuses on enabling applications like real-time video generation and advanced reasoning agents, and is backed by leading investors and engineers.