Senior Systems Prototyping and Emulation Engineer

NVIDIA Corporation; Santa Clara (CA); On-site; USD 168,000 - 311,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Benefits

Job summary

NVIDIA in Santa Clara, CA is seeking a Senior Systems Prototyping and Emulation Engineer to craft FPGA prototypes and emulation environments for GPUs, SOCs, NICs, and Switches. This onsite role involves coordinating across geographies to solve complex problems daily.

You will drive bring-up, validation, and debug activities, improve performance, and ensure correct design implementation on prototyping platforms, with broad exposure to pre-silicon software validation and scalable infrastructure.

Qualifications

• BS in Electrical Engineering, or MS with substantial FPGA prototyping/hardware emulation experience.
• Strong understanding of FPGA prototyping and hardware emulation architectures, devices, flows, and tools.
• Hands-on experience with primary tools including ProtoCompiler/Synplify Premier, Xilinx Vivado, and emulation platforms (ZeBu/Veloce).
• Exposure to ASIC design/verification tools (VCS/Verdi/GDB) and knowledge of Verilog/SystemVerilog.

Responsibilities

• Build FPGA prototypes and hardware emulation environments by making RTL FPGA/emulation-friendly, partitioning the design, and taking it through synthesis, place-and-route, and emulator compilation flows.
• Improve performance of FPGA prototypes and emulation platforms, analyze timing/performance bottlenecks, and generate bitstreams/images.
• Bring up designs on FPGA prototyping and hardware emulation platforms and drive complex debug and problem-solving activities.
• Release prototypes and emulation environments to internal customers and support them through debug, validation, and software enablement.
• Understand the design and implementation, define configurations, develop/modify bring-up and testing infrastructure, and verify correctness of the design.
• Understand complex system topologies with multiple ASICs to realize DGX systems on prototyping platforms and emulators.
• Work closely with architects, designers, verification engineers, validation teams, and software teams to accomplish project goals.
• Enable pre-silicon software development, validation, and performance analysis using FPGA prototypes and hardware emulation environments.
• Develop and optimize emulation-friendly validation infrastructures, including high-performance software interfaces and scalable debug methodologies.

Skills

FPGA prototyping

Hardware emulation

RTL design

Verilog

SystemVerilog

C/C++ testbenches

Debugging complex systems

Education

BS in Electrical Engineering

MS in Electrical Engineering

Tools

Synopsys ProtoCompiler

Synplify Premier

Xilinx Vivado

Synopsys ZeBu

Siemens Veloce

Job description

Are you passionate about DGX systems connecting multiple ASIC chips together, FPGA prototyping, and hardware emulation? Are you interested in pushing the boundaries of innovation to make FPGA prototypes and emulation platforms faster, more scalable, and more efficient? Can you work in a fast-paced environment that requires coordination between many teams across geographies and solving sophisticated problems daily? If so, we are looking for hardworking systems engineers who will craft FPGA prototypes and emulation environments for our next generation GPUs, SOCs, NICs, and Switches on industry-standard FPGA prototyping and emulation platforms. We are now looking for a Senior Systems Prototyping and Emulation Engineer to join our Emulation team onsite in Santa Clara, CA.

What you’ll be doing:

• Build FPGA prototypes and hardware emulation environments by making RTL FPGA/emulation-friendly, partitioning the design, and taking it through synthesis, place-and-route, and emulator compilation flows.
• Improve performance of FPGA prototypes and emulation platforms, analyze timing/performance bottlenecks, and generate bitstreams/images.
• Bring up designs on FPGA prototyping and hardware emulation platforms and drive complex debug and problem-solving activities.
• Release prototypes and emulation environments to internal customers and support them through debug, validation, and software enablement.
• Understand the design and implementation, define configurations, develop/modify bring-up and testing infrastructure, and verify correctness of the design.
• Understand complex system topologies with multiple ASICs to realize DGX systems on prototyping platforms and emulators.
• Work closely with architects, designers, verification engineers, validation teams, and software teams to accomplish project goals.
• Enable pre-silicon software development, validation, and performance analysis using FPGA prototypes and hardware emulation environments.
• Develop and optimize emulation-friendly validation infrastructures, including high-performance software interfaces and scalable debug methodologies.

What we need to see:

• BS (or equivalent experience) in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or related fields with 8+ years of experience, or MS with 6+ years of proven experience in FPGA prototyping and/or hardware emulation.
• Strong understanding of FPGA prototyping and hardware emulation architectures, devices, flows, and tools.
• Hands-on experience with Synopsys ProtoCompiler or Synplify Premier, Xilinx Vivado, and familiarity with emulation platforms such as Synopsys ZeBu or Siemens Veloce.
• Exposure to ASIC design and verification tools (VCS or equivalent, Verdi, GDB).
• Knowledge of Verilog, SystemVerilog, and digital design concepts.
• Understanding of industry-standard protocols such as PCIe, CXL, NVLINK, USB, CHI, and CPU-GPU coherency.
• Hands-on experience with lab FPGA debug methodologies, tools (Identify or ChipScope), and lab debug equipment (oscilloscopes, logic analyzers).
• Strong expertise in developing and optimizing emulation-friendly C/C++ testbenches and transactors that can operate efficiently at emulation speeds is a critical skill for this role and experience minimizing host-emulator communication bottlenecks, improving transaction throughput, and architecting scalable software-driven validation environments for high-performance SoCs and multi-ASIC systems.
• Ability to develop efficient DPI/PLI/SystemC-based interfaces and software infrastructures that enable high-speed validation, debug, and bring-up on hardware emulation platforms.

Ways to stand out from the crowd:

• Scripting knowledge (Perl/shell/Tcl/Python) is desired.
• Good documentation, communication, and interpersonal skills.
• Experience with memory bring-up of LPDDR5/6, DDR5/6, CXL/PCIe, and/or high-speed interfaces such as USB4/3 is desirable.
• Prior experience with hardware emulation or prototyping platforms (Synopsys HAPS, ZeBu, Siemens Veloce) of a high-performance processor or SOC is highly desirable.
• Understanding of performance-sensitive validation methodologies for large-scale emulation environments, including efficient logging, synchronization, memory handling, and protocol traffic generation and experience enabling pre-silicon software validation, firmware bring-up, or system-level debug on emulation platforms is a plus!

NVIDIA has continuously reinvented itself over two decades. Our invention of the GPU in 1999 sparked the growth of the PC gaming market, redefined modern computer graphics, and revolutionized parallel computing. More recently, GPU deep learning ignited modern AI — the next era of computing. NVIDIA is a “learning machine” that constantly evolves by adapting to new opportunities that are hard to solve, that only we can tackle, and that matter to the world. This is our life’s work, to amplify human imagination and intelligence. Make the choice to join us today! Your base salary will be determined based on your location, experience, and the pay of employees in similar positions. The base salary range is 168,000 USD - 264,500 USD for Level 4, and 196,000 USD - 310,500 USD for Level 5. You will also be eligible for equity and benefits. Applications for this job will be accepted at least until May 23, 2026. This posting is for an existing vacancy. NVIDIA uses AI tools in its recruiting processes. NVIDIA is committed to fostering a diverse work environment and proud to be an equal opportunity employer. As we highly value diversity in our current and future employees, we do not discriminate (including in our hiring and promotion practices) on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status or any other characteristic protected by law. NVIDIA pioneered accelerated computing. Today, our AI infrastructure powers global intelligence, transforming every industry. Learn more about NVIDIA.