Principal Debug Validation Engineer
Graphcore is a Bristol-based AI chipmaker (IPU accelerators), a SoftBank subsidiary and a Molten Ventures portfolio company.
Maintainer signals as of 8/20/2026
About Graphcore
Graphcore (graphcore.ai) is a British semiconductor company building Intelligence Processing Units (IPUs) for AI workloads. Founded in Bristol in 2016, it was acquired by SoftBank in 2024. It is a portfolio company of Molten Ventures.
Skills
Candidate Availability
Required and preferred rules are kept separate and reflect the wording in the original posting.
About the Role
You will lead post-silicon debug and validation activities for AI compute silicon and platform technologies. You will investigate complex silicon firmware software and system-level issues, develop debug methodologies, analyze logs and hardware data, build automated validation infrastructure, support testing and diagnostics, communicate technical risks, and contribute to readiness and product quality decisions.
Requirements
- Strong experience in bare metal environments
- Knowledge of SoC and platform architectures
- Expertise in debug infrastructure and post-silicon debug methodologies
- Strong programming skills in Python C or CMM
- Experience with post-silicon validation in digital ASIC environments
- Strong Linux and Python experience
- Deep knowledge of scan DFT JTAG and trace infrastructure
- Debug skills including fault tree analysis failure isolation fishbone methodologies and system-level debug techniques
- Ability to work independently across hardware firmware and software domains
- Understanding of DFT flows from insertion through post-silicon validation
- Experience developing tooling for parsing and analyzing debug data including scan dump parsing
- Driver-level experience with PCIe Ethernet LPDDR DDR HBM I2C I3C or SPI
- Experience with CoreSight CTI ETx DStream JLink Lauterbach ATB or STM
- Knowledge of mixed-signal building blocks including PLLs high-speed PHYs and IC control and communication protocols
- Experience with Arm CPU architectures system IP and associated debug tooling
- Experience with AMBA protocols
- Understanding of ML applications and associated workloads
- Experience in characterization failure analysis test development statistical analysis and customer support
Responsibilities
- Lead post-silicon debug and validation activities for AI compute silicon and platform technologies
- Drive prioritization planning and execution across multiple projects and milestones
- Investigate and resolve complex silicon firmware software and system-level issues
- Develop structured debug methodologies and failure analysis processes
- Collaborate with architecture RTL firmware software and systems engineering teams to identify root causes
- Drive debug of CPU memory interconnect and high-speed I/O subsystems
- Develop and enhance automated debug regression and validation infrastructure using Python
- Analyze logs traces telemetry and hardware data
- Support validation tests debug tooling and custom diagnostics
- Define validation metrics debug workflows and reporting standards
- Drive continuous improvement of debug processes validation methodologies and engineering workflows
- Communicate technical risks status and recommendations to engineering leadership and stakeholders
- Support silicon readiness reviews and product quality and release decisions