Member of Technical Staff - Microarchitectural Validation

Architect Labs; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity stake

Competitive salary

Autonomy in startup

Job summary

Architect seeks a Technical Staff member to own verification strategy for AI-generated designs taping out on leading foundries. You will work at the intersection of hardware verification and AI-driven design automation, contributing to end-to-end DV across multiple IPs.

Ideal candidates have 5+ years tapeout experience and strong SystemVerilog/UVM/C/C++ skills, with Python preferred, and a track record in pre/post-silicon verification and collaboration with AI teams.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's, Master's, or PhD in Electrical Engineering or Computer Engineering.
• Tapeout experience: 5+ years (10+ preferred) working on advanced-node tapeouts at top chip companies or fast-moving silicon startups.
• End-to-end silicon delivery is a strong plus.
• Verification expertise: Deep expertise in verification/validation, emulation, and architectural and system-level verification of industry-standard IPs.
• Proven track record defining microarchitectural checkers and monitors, modeling IP and SoC validation platforms, and developing modular, reusable validation collateral.
• Coding: Strong skills in SystemVerilog, UVM, and C/C++ for test environments. Python strongly preferred.
• Subsystem Depth: Hands-on verification experience in at least one of the following areas: ARM/AMBA protocols, CPU subsystems, Memory controllers and PHY, On-chip interconnect / NoC, NPU / ML accelerator cores, Security IPs.
• Methodology: Hands-on experience with simulation and emulation flows and methodologies. Experience mapping IP and SoC designs to FPGA prototypes for fast functional verification.
• Execution: Excellent problem-solving, collaboration, and communication skills with strong attention to detail. Ability to work independently and drive cross-functional alignment.
• Leadership: Ability and desire to lead the DV function over time as the team scales.

Responsibilities

• Review AI-driven test plan and validation strategy for internal and external SoC projects.
• Provide domain-specific expertise to our AI/ML teams, including architectural and microarchitectural checks, validation modularity, checkers, coverage models, and interface protocols — helping encode DV best practices into our AI-driven flows.
• Independently define, drive, and coordinate validation, verification, and integration flows across multiple IPs, including checkpoints and collateral handoffs.
• Collaborate with architecture, design, and AI/ML leads to generate simulation- and emulation-ready collateral that scales across projects.
• Track emerging trends in semiconductor verification and AI-driven design automation to keep our methodology cutting-edge in quality, scalability, and throughput.

Skills

Tapeout experience

Verification expertise

SystemVerilog/UVM/C/C++

Python

ARM/AMBA protocols

CPU subsystems

Memory controllers/NoC

NPU/ML accelerator cores

Security IPs

Leadership

Education

Bachelor's/Master's/PhD in Electrical or Computer Engineering

Tools

FPGA prototyping (Xilinx Vivado/Vitis)

Job description

Architect is a frontier AI lab for custom silicon. We partner with frontier labs, clouds / neoclouds, physical AI companies, and advanced fabs to tape-out custom chips co-designed for next-generation AI workloads. Our goal is to compress end-to-end software to silicon timelines, and maximize intelligence per watt and per dollar for the world. We are a small exceptional team across silicon, systems, software and frontier AI. Our team have led research teams at nearly every frontier AI lab, and at some of the most complex SoCs in the world.

What You’ll Do

As a Member of the Technical Staff on the Design Verification & Validation team at Architect, you’ll own the verification strategy behind AI-generated designs taping out on leading foundries. You’ll work at the intersection of rigorous hardware verification and AI-driven design automation.

• Review AI-driven test plan, and validation strategy for internal and external SoC projects.
• Provide domain-specific expertise to our AI/ML teams, including architectural and microarchitectural checks, validation modularity, checkers, coverage models, and interface protocols — helping encode DV best practices into our AI-driven flows.
• Independently define, drive, and coordinate validation, verification, and integration flows across multiple IPs, including checkpoints and collateral handoffs.
• Collaborate with architecture, design, and AI/ML leads to generate simulation- and emulation-ready collateral that scales across projects.
• Track emerging trends in semiconductor verification and AI-driven design automation to keep our methodology cutting-edge in quality, scalability, and throughput.

What We’d Like to See

Qualifications & Skills:

• Degree: Bachelor's, Master's, or PhD in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a closely related field.
• Tapeout Experience: 5+ years (10+ preferred) working on advanced-node tapeouts at top chip companies or fast-moving silicon startups. End-to-end silicon delivery is a strong plus.
• Verification Expertise: Deep expertise in verification/validation, emulation, and architectural and system-level verification of industry-standard IPs. Proven track record defining microarchitectural checkers and monitors, modeling IP and SoC validation platforms, and developing modular, reusable validation collateral.
• Coding: Strong skills in SystemVerilog, UVM, and C/C++ for test environments. Python strongly preferred.
• Subsystem Depth: Hands-on verification experience in at least one of the following areas:
• ARM/AMBA protocols (APB, AHB, AXI, and ideally ACE for coherent CPU interfaces)
• CPU subsystems — boot, interrupts, debug, coherency
• Memory controllers and PHY — LPDDR/DDR interfaces, controller-level verification
• On-chip interconnect / NoC — routing, arbitration, QoS, bandwidth
• NPU / ML accelerator cores — datapath, scratchpad memory, DMA engines
• Security IPs and/or working with secure enclaves
• Methodology: Hands-on experience with simulation and emulation flows and methodologies. Experience mapping IP and SoC designs to FPGA prototypes for fast functional verification.
• Execution: Excellent problem-solving, collaboration, and communication skills with strong attention to detail. Ability to work independently and drive cross-functional alignment.
• Leadership: Ability and desire to lead the DV function over time as the team scales.

Expected Exposure (beyond the baseline above):

Candidates should also bring hands-on exposure to most of the following:

• Microarchitecture: Working knowledge of the architecture and microarchitecture of complex digital subsystems, such as CPUs, XPUs, cache-coherency fabrics (NoCs/switches), memory hierarchies, and high-speed I/O (HSIO) protocols.
• Advanced Pre-Silicon Verification: Experience contributing to coverage-driven verification using advanced UVM environments, formal verification, and emulation to validate microarchitectural boundary conditions and corner cases.
• Post-Silicon Debug: Participation in post-silicon triage and debug, mapping observed silicon behavior back to RTL using logic analyzers, oscilloscopes, and internal debug hooks.
• End-to-End Debug: A track record of isolating and resolving hard HW/FW/SW interaction bugs, performance bottlenecks, or protocol violations, in pre-silicon environments and/or post-silicon bring-up.

Bonus:

• SoC-level DV experience — bringing up full systems with memory controller + PHY + CPU connectivity, validating top-level integration.
• Deep experience with AMBA protocols, specifically ACE for coherent CPU-memory access.
• FPGA prototyping experience (ideally Xilinx Vivado/Vitis).
• Verification experience spanning multiple of: interconnects, CPU subsystems, ARM AMBA, memory controllers, NPUs.
• Tapeout experience at frontier AI chip startups (MatX, Groq, Cerebras, d-Matrix, etc.) or tier-1 silicon companies (Apple, NVIDIA, Google, Qualcomm, Broadcom, AMD).

What We Offer

• Competitive salary and meaningful equity stake
• Fast-paced startup with autonomy and visible impact
• Cutting-edge challenges at the intersection of AI and silicon design