Staff Engineer,Post-Silicon Validation - Austin, Texas, United States
$100,000 - $500,000 USD yearly
Originally posted 28 September 2026 by the employer.
Work on RISC-V–based SoCs.
About the role
This role involves driving the bring-up, validation, and debug of RISC-V–based SoCs, sitting at the intersection of silicon, firmware, and system software.
What you'll do
- Lead first-silicon bring-up of RISC-V CPU–based SoCs and execute post-silicon validation plans.
- Debug silicon issues across CPU cores, interconnects, memory subsystems, peripherals, and high-speed interfaces.
- Develop and debug bare-metal tests, boot flows, and collaborate on Linux bring-up and driver validation.
- Provide actionable feedback, support ECO validation, and drive fixes for future silicon revisions.
What you'll need
- 5+ years of experience in SoC bring-up, validation, and silicon debug.
- Strong grasp of CPU and SoC architectures, including RISC-V privilege modes, caches, coherency, and memory systems.
- Comfortable debugging complex hardware/software interaction issues using lab tools and low-level software.
- Experience working closely with RTL, firmware, and software teams.
This role has been open 12 days — well below the 54-day median for Post-Silicon Validation roles.
Post-Silicon Validation · Design Verification
|
Open roles in category
119
|
Median days open
54 d
|
Median salary
$185k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, and who else is hiring
| Metric | Tenstorrent | All employers we track in this specialty (119 roles · 29 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 2 | 119 |
| Open roles in the wider Silicon Validation & Test family | 8 | 2196 · 111 employers |
| Median days open | 12 d | 54 d (−42 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $185k |
Who's hiring in this category
- Qualcomm · 20 open roles · median 32 d
- AMD · 16 open roles · median 58 d
- NVIDIA · 15 open roles · median 64 d
- Graphcore · 10 open roles · median 115 d
- Amazon · 6 open roles · median 34 d
- Synopsys · 6 open roles · median 3 d
How we counted: 119 open Post-Silicon Validation (Design Verification) roles from 29 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 10 Oct 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 Silicon Validation & Test family row. Figures refresh nightly.