Principal Application Engineer- Emulation

Synopsys, Inc.; Austin (TX); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Synopsys, Inc. in Austin, TX seeks a Senior Emulation Engineer to lead technical engagements, diagnose performance bottlenecks, and improve verification workflows in real projects.

You will design strategies for complex SoC/ASIC emulation, collaborate with R&D, and mentor engineers while delivering training and best practices for customers.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in hardware emulation or verification environments.
• Strong RTL debugging and performance optimization skills.
• Experience with emulation partitioning and testbench integration.

Responsibilities

• Lead technical engagements with customers deploying ZeBu or other emulation platforms.
• Design emulation strategies for complex SoC/ASIC projects.
• Collaborate with R&D to validate new features against customer use cases.
• Develop and deliver technical training sessions and best practice guides.
• Troubleshoot emulation failures across hardware, RTL, and software layers.

Skills

Emulation

HDL Proficiency

UVM/Verification

Python Scripting

Customer Engagement

Education

Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering

MS or PhD in related field

Tools

Synopsys ZeBu

Mentor Veloce

Cadence Palladium

Job description

We Are

Synopsys is the leader in engineering solutions from silicon to systems, enabling customers to rapidly innovate AI-powered products. We deliver industry-leading silicon design, IP, simulation and analysis solutions, and design services. We partner closely with our customers across a wide range of industries to maximize their R&D capability and productivity, powering innovation today that ignites the ingenuity of tomorrow.

You Are

You have spent years deep in emulation platforms, the kind where a single debug session can stretch across hardware, software, and verification layers, and you have learned that the hardest part is not running the emulation, it is making it run fast enough to matter. You think in workflows, not features. You know the difference between a setup that demos well and one that actually closes verification for a complex SoC on schedule, and you care deeply about that difference.

You are comfortable walking into a customer site where the emulation run is failing in ways that make no sense on paper, and walking out three hours later with a root cause, a fix, and a plan to prevent it from happening again. You do not wait for perfect documentation. You dig into the platform, ask the right questions, and move.

Leading comes naturally to you, not because you have the title, but because people trust your judgment. You push back when a verification strategy is going to hit a wall in three months. You mentor without making it feel like mentoring. At Synopsys, you will work with customers who are building the chips that power everything, and the emulation strategies you design will determine whether they hit their tapeout or slip by quarters.

What You'll Be Doing

• Lead technical engagements with customers deploying ZeBu or other emulation platforms, diagnosing performance bottlenecks, debug issues, and workflow inefficiencies that block verification progress
• Design emulation strategies for complex SoC and ASIC projects, defining partitioning approaches, testbench integration, and bring-up sequences that actually work under real project constraints
• Collaborate directly with Synopsys R&D teams to elevate product gaps, influence roadmap priorities, and validate new features against customer use cases before they ship
• Develop and deliver technical training sessions, workshops, and best practice guides for customer engineering teams and internal application engineers
• Troubleshoot critical emulation failures in live customer environments, working across hardware, RTL, testbench, and software layers to isolate root cause and restore productivity
• Mentor junior applications engineers on emulation methodologies, debugging techniques, and customer engagement strategies, building the team's technical depth and customer impact

The Impact You Will Have

• Accelerate verification closure for customers building AI accelerators, automotive SoCs, and hyperscale processors, cutting months off their schedules through smarter emulation strategies
• Expand ZeBu adoption across new customer segments by proving out use cases, building reference flows, and demonstrating measurable ROI in real project contexts
• Shape the emulation product roadmap by translating customer pain points into actionable R&D requirements that improve performance, usability, and scalability for the entire user base
• Build long-term technical partnerships with lead architects and verification managers at top semiconductor companies, becoming their trusted advisor for emulation and verification strategy
• Reduce customer escalations and support load by creating reusable methodologies, automation scripts, and documentation that solve recurring problems once instead of repeatedly
• Strengthen Synopsys' reputation as the emulation platform that does not just run, but runs fast enough and stable enough to be the backbone of verification for the hardest chips in the industry

What You'll Need

• 10+ years of hands-on experience with hardware emulation platforms such as Synopsys ZeBu, Mentor Veloce, or Cadence Palladium, including deployment, debug, and performance optimization
• Deep proficiency in hardware description languages including Verilog, SystemVerilog, and VHDL, with the ability to read, debug, and optimize RTL for emulation
• Strong understanding of verification methodologies including UVM, constrained random testing, and coverage-driven verification in the context of emulation environments
• Solid grasp of SoC and ASIC architecture, including subsystem integration, interconnect protocols, memory hierarchies, and software/hardware co-verification flows
• Experience with scripting languages such as Python, Perl, or TCL for automation, flow development, and data analysis in emulation and verification contexts
• Proven ability to debug complex interactions across RTL, testbenches, emulation hardware, and embedded software, isolating issues that span multiple domains
• Experience with customer-facing technical roles such as field applications engineering, customer support engineering, or technical consulting, with a track record of solving hard problems under pressure

Who You Are

• You can walk into a war room where emulation is down and the tapeout is in six weeks, assess what is actually broken versus what people think is broken, and get the team focused on the right fix
• You explain a complex emulation partitioning tradeoff to a verification lead in two sentences without losing the nuance, and you know when to go deeper and when to move on
• You do not need to be the smartest person in the room, but you are the one people turn to when the problem is ambiguous, the pressure is high, and the path forward is not obvious
• You push back when a customer asks for something that will not actually solve their problem, and you do it in a way that builds trust instead of burning it
• You stay current on verification trends, emulation technology, and industry shifts not because someone told you to, but because you are genuinely curious about what is next and how it changes the game

The Team You'll Be Part Of

You will join a dynamic and diverse team of principal engineers and applications specialists focused on delivering world-class emulation and verification solutions. The team collaborates closely with customers, product R&D, and other engineering groups, fostering innovation and driving technical excellence. Together, you will shape the future of hardware verification and accelerate the development of next-generation semiconductor technologies.

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