Verification Engineer, Emulation and Prototyping

Job Title

Verification Engineer, Emulation and Prototyping

Role Summary

Work on emulation and FPGA prototyping for pre-silicon validation of GPUs, SoCs, NICs, and switches. The role develops emulation-friendly RTL and test infrastructure, brings up designs on hardware platforms, and enables pre-silicon software validation and performance analysis.

Experience Level

Mid-level. Typical candidates have multi-year industry experience in FPGA prototyping or hardware emulation (see Education Requirements for specific years-of-experience guidance).

Responsibilities

Primary responsibilities focus on building, optimizing, and scaling emulation and FPGA verification environments and supporting pre-silicon software and system validation.

• Prepare RTL for FPGA/emulation by partitioning, making it synthesis-friendly, and running synthesis/place-and-route and emulator compilation flows.
• Bring up and validate designs on hardware emulation and FPGA platforms; generate bitstreams/images and debug complex issues.
• Analyze and improve emulation/FPGA performance and timing bottlenecks.
• Develop and optimize emulation-friendly testbenches, transactors, and high-performance software interfaces for scalable validation.
• Integrate and scale verification methodologies to support extensive test plans at FPGA/emulation speeds.
• Collaborate with architects, designers, verification, validation, and software teams to meet project goals.
• Enable pre-silicon software development, firmware bring-up, and system-level performance analysis on emulation platforms.
• Drive debug, logging, synchronization, and memory/traffic generation strategies for large-scale emulation runs.

Requirements

Must-have technical skills and hands-on experience required for the role.

• Strong understanding of FPGA prototyping and hardware emulation architectures, flows, devices, and tools.
• Hands-on experience with simulators or emulators from multiple vendors and with hardware emulation platforms (examples: Synopsys ZeBu, Siemens Veloce, Cadence Z3).
• Familiarity with FPGA toolchains (examples: ProtoCompiler, Synplify Premier, Xilinx Vivado) and place-and-route flows.
• Proven ability to write and optimize SystemVerilog/Verilog for testbenches and emulator integration.
• Experience developing high-performance C/C++ testbenches, transactors, and minimizing host-emulator communication bottlenecks.
• Ability to develop DPI/PLI/SystemC-based interfaces and supporting software infrastructures for emulation platforms.
• Knowledge of industry-standard protocols and coherency mechanisms (examples: PCIe, CXL, NVLINK, USB, CHI, CPU–GPU coherency).

Preferred / Nice-to-have:

• Experience with additional prototyping/emulation platforms (Synopsys HAPS) or transactor solutions from Cadence/Synopsys/Siemens.
• Proficiency in C/C++, Python, and scripting (Perl or similar).
• Experience enabling pre-silicon software validation, firmware bring-up, and high-performance system debug on emulation platforms.

Education Requirements

BS in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field with 5+ years of relevant experience, or MS with 3+ years of relevant experience; equivalent practical experience is acceptable.

About the Company

Company: NVIDIA

Headquarters: Santa Clara, California, USA

NVIDIA is a global leader in accelerated computing, renowned for its innovative solutions in AI and digital twins that transform diverse industries. The company specializes in networking technologies, providing end-to-end InfiniBand and Ethernet solutions for servers and storage that optimize performance and scalability. NVIDIA serves sectors such as high-performance computing, enterprise data centers, and cloud computing, constantly reinventing its products and services to stay ahead in the market.