Silicon Emulation Engineer

Waymo; Mountain View (CA); Hybrid; USD 175,000 - 215,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Annual bonus program

Equity incentive plan

Generous company benefits

Job summary

Waymo's Compute Team is seeking an experienced engineer to design and optimize emulation testbenches, collaborate across teams, and support silicon designs. The ideal candidate has a BS in Computer Science or Electrical Engineering and 5 years of related experience.

This hybrid role offers a competitive salary range from $175,000 to $215,000, along with potential bonuses and equity incentives.

Qualifications

• 5 years of silicon development experience required.
• Proficiency in hardware emulation platforms essential.
• Strong programming skills for automation and testing.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with teams on silicon designs.
• Design and optimize emulation testbenches.
• Write synthesizable transactors for emulated designs.
• Debug failures and assist with post-silicon bring-up.

Skills

Silicon development experience

Emulation platforms (Palladium, Zebu, etc.)

SystemVerilog experience

Programming in C++, Python, or TCL

Debugging ability across hardware and software

Education

BS degree in Computer Science / Electrical Engineering

Tools

Trace32

OpenOCD

Job description

Waymo's Compute Team is responsible for delivering the compute platform that runs the fully autonomous vehicle’s software stack. The team designs high‑performance custom silicon, develops system‑level compute architectures, and collaborates across teams to optimize hardware and software for maximum performance.

This role follows a hybrid work schedule and reports to a Silicon Engineering Lead.

You Will

• Collaborate with the Design, Verification, and Software teams to simulate future silicon designs and software on an emulation platform, targeting functional and performance validation and left‑shift of software development.
• Design, implement, and optimize emulation testbenches, balancing performance and debugging capabilities based on user needs and hardware constraints.
• Write end‑to‑end synthesizable transactors to interact with emulated designs through software APIs and C‑DPI.
• Triage and root‑cause failures alongside emulation users, leveraging waveforms, software logging, and custom‑built emulation monitors.
• Assist with post‑silicon bring‑up, debug, and characterization.
• Build infrastructure to support the emulation user base, including tools for model build, regression, automation, continuous integration, data analysis, and training.

You Have

• BS degree in Computer Science / Electrical Engineering or related field and 5 years of silicon development experience.
• Experience with at least one major hardware emulation platform (Palladium, Zebu, Veloce, Protium, HAPS).
• High level of proficiency with one or more emulation approaches: virtual prototyping, testbench acceleration, hybrid emulation, in‑circuit emulation (speed bridge), QEMU, or VirtualBox.
• Experience with SystemVerilog and design verification methodologies.
• Programming and scripting (C++, Python, or TCL) for automation, test development, debug flows, and release process.
• Strong debug and problem‑solving ability across hardware and software.

We Prefer

• Experience with AXI/AMBA, PCIe, DRAM, and Ethernet interfaces.
• Performance and power analysis techniques.
• Experience with JTAG, DFT, UART, SPI, GPIO, and other test/low‑speed interfaces.
• Knowledge of advanced design verification methods (coverage, gate‑level simulation, assertions, and UVM).
• Post‑silicon debug software (e.g., Trace32, OpenOCD, TARMAC) and lab bench tools (analyzers, scopes, meters).
• Understanding of bare metal programming, embedded systems, Linux internals, operating systems, boot loaders, drivers, and firmware.

Salary Range: $175,000—$215,000 USD.

Waymo employees are also eligible to participate in Waymo’s discretionary annual bonus program, equity incentive plan, and generous Company benefits program, subject to eligibility requirements.