Principal Emulation Engineer
$207,000 - $230,000 USD yearly
Originally posted 9 September 2026 by the employer.
About the role
As a Principal Emulation Engineer, you will build and operate emulation environments that let verification teams stress-test complex ASICs before silicon. You will validate switching, PCIe, Ethernet, memory, and storage interfaces across the compute fabric in partnership with logic design, firmware, and verification teams.
What you'll do
- Architect, build, and maintain emulation environments for complex ASICs and SoCs.
- Integrate RTL, transactors, protocol models, software, and test infrastructure to enable hardware-software co-simulation.
- Exercise and debug PCI Express Gen 3 and above, Ethernet, DDR, NVMe, SPI, I2C/I3C, and similar interfaces.
- Translate system requirements into practical emulation scenarios, tests, checkers, and measurable verification goals.
- Debug design, environment, transactor, software, and test-code issues across the emulation stack.
- Analyze protocol behavior, functional coverage, performance, and corner cases across server, storage, and networking systems.
What you'll need
- Experience architecting and maintaining emulation environments for ASICs and SoCs.
- Hands-on experience integrating RTL, transactors, protocol models, and software for hardware-software co-simulation.
- Technical expertise exercising and debugging protocols such as PCI Express Gen 3 and above, Ethernet, DDR, NVMe, SPI, or I2C/I3C.
- Proven capability debugging across design, environment, transactor, software, and test code.
- Experience defining emulation test scenarios, checkers, and functional coverage closure goals.
Skills: emulation environments, stress-test ASICs, hardware-software co-simulation, PCI Express, SystemVerilog
More semiconductor jobs: Astera Labs jobs · Verification engineer jobs · San Jose jobs
This role has been open 61 days — slightly above the 59-day median for Design Verification roles.
Design Verification · Design Verification
|
Open roles in category
1347
|
Median days open
59 d
|
Category median salary (all employers)
$185k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | Astera Labs | All employers we track in this specialty (1347 roles · 99 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 20 | 1347 |
| Open roles in the wider Digital Design & Verification family | 62 | 3524 · 120 employers |
| Median days open | 55 d | 59 d (−4 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $185k |
Skills observed across this category: emulation environments, stress-test ASICs, hardware-software co-simulation, PCI Express, SystemVerilog
Who's hiring in this category
- Qualcomm · 117 open roles · median 53 d
- Apple · 113 open roles · median 12 d
- NVIDIA · 105 open roles · median 73 d
- AMD · 84 open roles · median 69 d
- Synopsys · 74 open roles · median 53 d
- SiFive · 57 open roles · median 67 d
How we counted: 1347 open Design Verification (Design Verification) roles from 99 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 9 Nov 2026. Specialty figures count only roles carrying this exact specialty label, so an employer's related work in neighbouring specialties is not included there — it is counted in the wider Digital Design & Verification family row. Figures refresh nightly.