Principal Execution & QA Validation Engineer

About the role

Graphcore is a SoftBank Group company focused on building the hardware and software infrastructure required for artificial super intelligence. This leadership role oversees the quality, automation, and release readiness of silicon and platform technologies. You will define validation strategies and mentor engineering teams to ensure products meet high performance and reliability standards before reaching customers. In this capacity, you will own the end-to-end validation lifecycle from initial tapeout to final field release. You will act as the primary authority on product quality, establishing the methodology and rigor that determines whether a product is ready to ship. Your work will directly influence the stability and performance of the hardware that powers next-generation AI workloads. You will partner closely with architecture, firmware, software, and design teams to close gaps and eliminate risks proactively. This role requires a disciplined engineer who combines deep technical expertise with strong leadership to drive quality across the organization.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Define and implement validation strategies for silicon, subsystems, and platforms, covering functional, stress, and performance testing.
• Lead validation efforts from initial silicon bring-up through to final product release, coordinating activities across multiple teams.
• Build and maintain automation frameworks to accelerate regression testing and validation execution, reducing manual overhead.
• Analyze system behavior and validation data to perform root-cause debugging of complex failures that span hardware and software.
• Translate high-level product requirements into detailed test plans and measurable quality metrics that track progress and risk.
• Partner with architecture, firmware, software, and design teams to improve test coverage and integration across the development lifecycle.
• Develop tools for automated data collection and reporting to increase engineering visibility into product behavior and issues.
• Establish validation standards and mentor staff on best practices for quality and efficiency, fostering a culture of excellence.
• Drive the creation of reusable test assets and infrastructure that scale across products and engineering teams.
• Ensure validation processes align with quality objectives, risk assessments, and release readiness criteria before customer availability.
• Collaborate with operations and support teams to investigate field issues and validate fixes through targeted testing.
• Leverage CI/CD principles to integrate continuous testing into the validation workflow, improving feedback speed and reliability.
• Design and execute compliance and qualification tests as required by internal and external standards.
• Identify and mitigate potential failure modes through proactive analysis and experimentation during validation phases.

Requirements

• Significant experience in silicon, hardware, or system validation within a semiconductor or hardware development environment.
• Expert-level proficiency in Python for automation, scripting, and data analysis to build robust validation tools and workflows.
• Proven ability to design, implement, and manage validation frameworks and test orchestration across complex hardware platforms.
• Strong understanding of silicon bring-up workflows, including low-level initialization, firmware interaction, and hardware diagnostics.
• Experience managing technical initiatives and influencing cross-functional engineering teams without direct authority.
• Ability to convert complex, ambiguous requirements into structured test plans, procedures, and measurable quality outcomes.
• Strong diagnostic skills for investigating and resolving technical issues that span hardware, firmware, and software domains.
• Familiarity with quality metrics, risk assessment, and release readiness criteria to make data-driven decisions.
• Demonstrated capacity to work in a fast-paced, iterative development environment where priorities evolve quickly.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills to clearly articulate issues, findings, and recommendations to diverse audiences.
• Commitment to following defined processes while also improving them to increase efficiency and reduce errors over time.
• Willingness to collaborate closely with remote and cross-functional teams across geographies and time zones.
• Attention to detail and strong organizational skills to manage multiple validation activities and deliverables concurrently.
• Understanding of software development practices and version control systems to effectively interface with engineering teams.
• Ability to mentor and guide junior engineers, sharing knowledge and elevating the overall quality bar for the organization.

Nice to have

• Experience with post-silicon bring-up and FPGA-based validation environments to accelerate early hardware verification.
• Background in AI accelerators, high-performance computing, or semiconductor products that target machine learning workloads.
• Proficiency in C, C++, or embedded software development to debug issues that cross hardware and firmware boundaries.
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and continuous testing to integrate validation into fast delivery cycles.
• Ability to build dashboards and analytics tools for engineering reporting, providing actionable insights from test data.
• Experience automating laboratory test equipment, such as oscilloscopes, power supplies, or protocol analyzers.
• Familiarity with formal verification or emulation platforms to complement simulation and hardware validation efforts.
• Knowledge of industry standards and compliance requirements relevant to AI or data center hardware products.
• Experience contributing to open-source projects or internal tools that support the validation workflow.
• Track record of proposing and implementing process improvements that increase testing efficiency and coverage.

Practical notes

• This is a full-time position based in Bengaluru, India.
• Candidates must be eligible to work in India without sponsorship for this role.
• No relocation or visa support is available for this position.
• Travel may be required occasionally for collaboration, customer visits, or technical meetings.
• Applicants must meet the stated requirements; partial qualifications will not be considered.
• The selection process may include technical assessments, interviews, and validation exercises.
• This role reports to the Engineering Management team within the Validation Execution and Quality organization.
• Start dates will be determined based on business needs and candidate availability.
• Graphcore is committed to building a diverse team and encourages applications from engineers with varied backgrounds and experiences.
• The day-to-day responsibilities may evolve as the product and team scale to meet new challenges.
• Success in this role will be measured by the quality, coverage, and efficiency of validation outcomes delivered.