CPU Verification Engineer Design Verification Austin / Santa Clara / Markham · Hybrid

NUVACORE, Inc.; Austin, Northern (TX, KY); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 220,000; Full time

Job summary

NUVACORE, Inc. is seeking Verification Engineers at multiple levels—from Senior to Principal—to help prove the correctness of the Nuvacore CPU. You will join the design verification team to build test plans, environments, and checkers, collaborating with architecture and RTL design.

Responsibilities include driving verification strategy, building scalable environments, generating tests in assembly, C, or RIS, and closing coverage. You'll work with emulation, FPGA, and silicon bring-up.

Qualifications

• Degree in Electrical/Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or equivalent practical experience.
• 15+ years (Principal) or 4+ years (Senior) of design-verification experience, ideally on a CPU or complex digital design.
• Strong knowledge of CPU micro-architecture and digital logic — pipelines, out-of-order execution, and branch prediction.
• Hands-on functional verification: test plans, testbenches, checkers, transactors, and coverage.
• Proficiency in C/C++ and/or SystemVerilog, plus a scripting language (Python; Perl a plus).
• Experience writing and debugging tests in assembly for CPU verification.

Responsibilities

• Plan & Strategy: Drive the verification scope, strategy, and test plans for the CPU at unit and/or top level of the CPU design.
• Environment Setup: Build, maintain, and scale robust verification environments — stimulus generators, checkers, transactors, and coverage.
• Test & Debug: Generate complex directed and random tests in assembly, C, or random instruction sequences to expose corner cases.
• Performance Verification: Partner with architects to correlate RTL against performance models, hunting throughput and branch-prediction issues.
• Coverage Closure: Define the coverage space, write functional coverage monitors, and analyze metrics to prove test plan completeness.
• Cross-functional Collaboration: Work with architecture and RTL teams to root-cause failures and support emulation, FPGA, silicon bring-up.

Skills

CPU verification

Test plans & benches

C/C++

SystemVerilog

Python

Perl

RTL/CPU architecture

Education

Bachelor's degree in Electrical/Computer Engineering, CS

Tools

SystemVerilog tooling

Python scripting

RIS stimulus generation

Job description

Nuvacore is building a ground-up high performance, low-power CPU for next-generation compute workloads. We are seeking Verification Engineers at multiple levels — from Senior Engineer to Principal level — to help prove the correctness of the Nuvacore CPU. As part of the design verification (DV) team, you will help verify by building the test plans, environments, and checkers that find deep bugs in the pipeline long before silicon, working shoulder-to-shoulder with architecture and RTL design.

THE ROLE

Plan & Strategy: Drive the verification scope, strategy, and test plans for the CPU at unit and/or top level of the CPU design.

Environment Setup: Build, maintain, and scale robust verification environments — stimulus generators, checkers, transactors, and coverage — that exercise the pipeline end to end.

Test & Debug: Generate complex directed and random tests in assembly, C, or random instruction sequences (RIS) to expose corner cases such as speculation, hazards, flushes, and retirement ordering.

Performance Verification: Partner with architects to correlate RTL against performance models, hunting throughput, stall, and branch-prediction-accuracy issues.

Coverage Closure: Define the coverage space, write functional coverage monitors, and analyze metrics to prove the test plan is complete.

Cross-functional Collaboration: Partner with architecture and RTL teams to root-cause failures, drive design fixes, and support emulation, FPGA, and silicon bring-up.

REQUIREMENTS — MUST HAVE

Degree in Electrical/Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or equivalent practical experience.

15+ years (Principal) or 4+ years (Senior Engineer) of design-verification experience, ideally on a CPU or complex digital design.

Strong knowledge of CPU micro-architecture and digital logic — pipelines, out-of-order execution, and branch prediction.

Hands-on functional verification: test plans, testbenches, checkers, transactors, and coverage.

Proficiency in C/C++ and/or SystemVerilog, plus a scripting language (Python; Perl a plus).

Experience writing and debugging tests in assembly for CPU verification.

REQUIREMENTS — NICE TO HAVE

Experience on one or more of Front-end / execution-unit verification, load/store cache verification, SoC/System verification, Debug/Power mgmt verification.

Random instruction sequence (RIS) stimulus generation.

Constrained-random verification and coverage-driven closure.

Assertions and formal verification.

Emulation/FPGA and silicon bring-up and debug (waveforms, trace).

Driving a verification problem end-to-end to sign-off.