AI SoC Validation / Bring-up Lead
Molten Ventures (formerly Draper Esprit) is a European venture capital firm that has spent twenty years backing founders and innovators driving Europe's technology transformation. It invests capital alongside experience, energy, and partnership to help visionary technology companies scale, serving high-growth startups and scale-ups across Europe.
About Molten Ventures
Molten Ventures is a publicly listed venture capital firm focused on backing visionary founders building Europe's technology future. Beyond providing capital, the firm offers portfolio companies experience, energy, and partnership to help them scale faster and go further. Its portfolio includes companies that have collectively reached more than 50 million customers, crossed the $200m ARR mark, sold more than 7 million devices, and achieved notable public market outcomes including IPOs at market caps of £1bn and nearly £9bn. The firm operates seed funds, evaluates new investment opportunities and pitch decks from founders, maintains an investor portal for its shareholders, and publishes sustainability reporting covering responsible investment and portfolio engagement practices.
Skills
About the Role
You will be responsible for enabling pre-production software to run reliably on new silicon quickly and efficiently, before showing that the silicon meets the highest standards of quality, reliability and functionality, ready for production deployment. You will lead a team delivering post-silicon validation across the full AI SoC, working across silicon, firmware, and platform levels. You'll need deep technical understanding, strong hands-on debug experience, and the ability to collaborate effectively with hardware, software, and systems engineering teams.
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree in Electronic Engineering or equivalent; Master's preferred
- 20+ years in silicon, system, or platform validation, including 10+ years in technical leadership
- Proven experience leading post-silicon validation and bring-up for complex SoCs (AI, GPU, or CPU)
- Strong understanding of SoC architecture, coherency protocols, power management, and interconnects
- Expertise in debug tools, DFT infrastructure, and validation automation frameworks
- Proficient in C/C++, Python, and Linux-based environments
- Experience with large-scale validation clusters is an advantage
- Excellent communication, collaboration, and stakeholder management skills
- Must hold the right to work in the UK
Responsibilities
- Define and lead the post-silicon validation strategy for AI SoCs
- Drive investigation and resolution of complex issues spanning silicon, firmware, operating systems, and platform interactions
- Ensure fixes are effective and sustainable
- Collaborate with design, software, and validation teams to align on quality objectives and debug priorities
- Use data-driven insights and clear communication to maintain alignment across teams
- Encourage use of emulation, prototyping, and large-scale validation infrastructure to improve coverage and reduce debug time
- Foster a culture of learning, transparency, and improvement in validation methods, automation, and analysis
- Provide updates on validation progress, risks, and quality indicators to executive teams and key partners
- Contribute to product readiness assessments and roadmap decisions
Benefits
- Flexible working
- Generous annual leave policy
- Private medical insurance and health cash plan
- Dental plan
- Pension (matched up to 5%)
- Life assurance and income protection
- Generous parental leave policy
- Employee assistance programme (health, mental wellbeing, and bereavement support)
- Healthy food and snacks at the Bristol office
- In-office barista bar