Sr. Staff Engineer, Emulation Validation Lead

We're seeking an Emulation Validation Lead to architect and drive our emulation validation strategy across both pre-silicon and post-silicon phases. As the technical leader of our Austin-based emulation team, you'll build validation infrastructure from the ground up, establish best practices, and mentor a growing team of engineers. This role sits at the critical intersection of design verification and silicon bring-up, ensuring our industry-leading AI/ML architectures meet performance and functional requirements before and after tapeout. You'll collaborate closely with design teams, work with hardware resources in Toronto, and partner with emulation platform vendors to push the boundaries of validation efficiency. This is a high-impact leadership role where your technical decisions and team-building efforts will directly influence Tenstorrent's product quality and time-to-market.

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

• A seasoned validation architect with 7+ years of hands-on experience in emulation-based validation, spanning both pre-silicon verification and post-silicon bring-up environments.
• A technical leader who thrives on building teams and mentoring engineers, capable of establishing validation methodologies and best practices while remaining hands-on when needed.
• A systems thinker who understands the full validation lifecycle—from RTL simulation and emulation testbench development through silicon failure analysis and debug.
• Collaborative by nature, with a track record of working across geographically distributed teams, partnering with design engineers, architects, and external vendors to solve complex problems.
• Resilient and adaptable, comfortable with ambiguity and excited by the challenge of building validation infrastructure from scratch in a fast-paced startup environment.
• Driven by impact, motivated by the opportunity to shape validation strategy for cutting-edge AI/ML processors and own outcomes that directly affect product success.

What You Bring

• BS/MS/PhD in EE, Computer Science, or similar with 7+ years of industry experience in hardware validation and emulation (10+ years preferred for senior leadership levels).
• Deep expertise with commercial emulation platforms including Palladium, Veloce, ZeBu, HAPS, or custom FPGA-based emulation solutions, with proven experience optimizing emulation performance and capacity.
• Strong programming and verification skills in SystemVerilog, Verilog, and industry-standard testbench methodologies (UVM/OVM), including assertions, coverage analysis, and debug tools/waveform viewers.
• Proven experience in both pre-silicon and post-silicon validation, including test plan development, test execution, regression frameworks, and failure analysis for complex SoC or CPU designs.
• Technical leadership experience building or leading validation teams, establishing processes, and driving cross-functional initiatives with design, architecture, and software teams.
• Self-assessment confidence in emulation and DV/simulation environments, with the ability to architect end-to-end validation strategies and make critical technical tradeoffs.

What You Will Learn

• Cutting-edge AI/ML architecture validation, working on Tenstorrent's high-performance RISC-V CPU and custom AI accelerators at the forefront of the AI revolution.
• End-to-end ownership of validation infrastructure, from selecting and deploying emulation platforms to defining team processes and establishing validation culture in a high-growth organization.
• Collaborative innovation across disciplines, partnering with world-class designers, architects, and software engineers who built a RISC-V CPU from scratch and are redefining AI compute.
• Strategic leadership skills, growing and mentoring a technical team in Austin while coordinating with hardware teams in Toronto and collaborating with global partners.
• Silicon bring-up mastery through real-world post-silicon validation, debugging complex hardware issues, and driving root cause analysis on industry-leading AI chips.
• Emulation platform optimization techniques, working directly with vendors and internal teams to push performance boundaries and unlock new validation methodologies.

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.