Staff Engineer, Emulation Technical Lead

Tenstorrent; Austin (TX); On-site; USD 100,000 - 500,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive compensation package

Benefits

Equal opportunity employer

Job summary

Tenstorrent is seeking a technical leader in Austin, TX, to oversee and optimize its emulation infrastructure, crucial for high-performance RISC-V CPUs. The ideal candidate will have expertise in CPU verification and emulation, with proficiency in Verilog and SystemVerilog. Responsibilities include leading technical strategy, ensuring robust emulation builds, and collaborating with various teams to enhance performance. Compensation ranges from $100k - $500k, reflecting experience and skills, with a highly competitive benefits package offered.

Qualifications

• Strong background in CPU verification, emulation, and debug.
• Fluency in Verilog and SystemVerilog for complex SoC designs.
• Experience driving complex debug efforts and mentoring engineers.
• Experience with Zebu emulation platforms is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Lead the technical strategy for scaling and optimizing emulation infrastructure.
• Enable reliable emulation builds and optimize performance.
• Drive cross-functional debug efforts and root cause analysis.
• Collaborate with Design Verification and tool vendors.

Skills

CPU verification

Emulation

Debugging

Verilog

SystemVerilog

Cross-functional collaboration

Leadership

Tools

Zebu emulation platforms

Job description

Tenstorrent is leading the industry on cutting-edge AI technology, revolutionizing performance expectations, ease of use, and cost efficiency. With AI redefining the computing paradigm, solutions must evolve to unify innovations in software models, compilers, platforms, networking, and semiconductors. Our diverse team of technologists have developed a high performance RISC‑V CPU from scratch, and share a passion for AI and a deep desire to build the best AI platform possible. We value collaboration, curiosity, and a commitment to solving hard problems. We are growing our team and looking for contributors of all seniorities.

At Tenstorrent, we are building open, state of art compute for AI and RISC‑V CPUs. You will lead the technical efforts and strategy around our existing emulation infrastructure for high‑performance CPUs that power these products. Your work will directly enable silicon bring‑up, validation, and customer‑ready systems.

This role is hybrid, based out of Austin, TX.

We welcome candidates at various experience levels for this role. During the interview process, candidates will be assessed for the appropriate level, and offers will align with that level, which may differ from the one in this posting.

Who You Are

• You have strong background in CPU verification, emulation, and debug.
• You are fluent in Verilog and SystemVerilog for complex SoC designs.
• You are a technical leader who drives complex debug efforts, solves ambiguous technical problems, and mentors younger engineers.
• Experience with Zebu emulation platforms is a significant plus.
• You collaborate closely with design, verification, and vendors to move fast and unblock teams.

What We Need

• Lead the technical strategy and execution to scale and optimize existing emulation infrastructure on commercial and open‑source platforms.
• Enable the emulation infrastructure and workflow, including producing reliable emulation builds.
• Drive and lead complex cross-functional debug and root cause analysis efforts.
• Optimize emulation performance and regression flows with Design Verification teams and tool vendors.

What You Will Learn

• How to bring state of art AI and CPU architectures to life on emulation.
• How to design large‑scale emulation regressions that mirror real customer workloads.
• How to tune emulation performance across different vendors and hardware platforms.
• How open hardware and software come together across Tenstorrent’s full compute stack.

Compensation for all engineers at Tenstorrent ranges from $100k - $500k including base and variable compensation targets. Experience, skills, education, background and location all impact the actual offer made.

Tenstorrent offers a highly competitive compensation package and benefits, and we are an equal opportunity employer.

This offer of employment is contingent upon the applicant being eligible to access U.S. export‑controlled technology. Due to U.S. export laws, including those codified in the U.S. Export Administration Regulations (EAR), the Company is required to ensure compliance with these laws when transferring technology to nationals of certain countries (such as EAR Country Groups D:1, E1, and E2). These requirements apply to persons located in the U.S. and all countries outside the U.S. As the position offered will have direct and/or indirect access to information, systems, or technologies subject to these laws, the offer may be contingent upon your citizenship/permanent residency status or ability to obtain prior license approval from the U.S. Commerce Department or applicable federal agency. If employment is not possible due to U.S. export laws, any offer of employment will be rescinded.