Description
Astera Labs (NASDAQ: ALAB) provides rack-scale AI infrastructure through purpose-built connectivity solutions. By collaborating with hyperscalers and ecosystem partners, Astera Labs enables organizations to unlock the full potential of modern AI. Astera Labs’ Intelligent Connectivity Platform integrates CXL®, Ethernet, NVLink, PCIe®, and UALink™ semiconductor-based technologies with the company’s COSMOS software suite to unify diverse components into cohesive, flexible systems that deliver end-to-end scale-up, and scale-out connectivity. The company’s custom connectivity solutions business complements its standards-based portfolio, enabling customers to deploy tailored architectures to meet their unique infrastructure requirements. Discover more at www.asteralabs.com.
Lead Emulation Engineer
Experience - 6–10 years
Job Summary
We are looking for a Lead Emulation Engineer to lead the deployment and execution of complex SoC/IP verification on hardware emulation platforms. The candidate will work closely with design verification, RTL, architecture, firmware, and post-silicon teams to accelerate functional verification, software development, performance validation, and system-level debug.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead emulation strategy and execution for complex SoC/IP designs.
- Develop and maintain emulation environments for large-scale ASIC/SoC designs.
- Bring up RTL designs on emulation platforms and debug compilation, mapping, and runtime issues.
- Develop and execute emulation-based verification plans.
- Enable software and firmware teams to execute workloads on emulated hardware.
- Support early software bring-up and system-level validation.
- Develop transactors, monitors, BFMs, and other emulation components as required.
- Optimize emulation builds for performance, capacity, and compile/runtime efficiency.
- Debug functional issues across RTL, testbench, emulation environment, and software.
- Work closely with DV teams to migrate suitable simulation-based tests to emulation.
- Develop automation for test execution, regression, data collection, and debug.
- Analyze emulation failures and drive root-cause identification with RTL/DV teams.
- Support performance and stress testing using realistic system workloads.
- Drive emulation methodology improvements and infrastructure enhancements.
- Mentor junior and senior emulation engineers.
- Provide technical leadership during major IP/SoC bring-up milestones.
- Support silicon bring-up by developing reusable emulation-based debug strategies.
Required Technical Skills
- Strong experience with ASIC/SoC emulation.
- Hands-on experience with platforms such as Cadence Palladium, Synopsys ZeBu, or equivalent.
- Strong understanding of RTL and digital design.
- Experience with SystemVerilog/Verilog.
- Experience with UVM-based verification environments and simulation-to-emulation flows.
- Strong understanding of emulation compile, mapping, partitioning, acceleration, and runtime concepts.
- Strong debugging and problem-solving skills.
- Scripting/programming experience using Python, Tcl, Perl, or C/C++.
Preferred Experience
- Experience with large, complex SoCs and multi-IP environments.
- Experience with PCIe, UALink, CXL, Ethernet, NoC, memory systems, or other high-speed interfaces.
- Experience with software-driven validation and early firmware enablement.
- Experience developing custom transactors and acceleration models.
- Experience with performance benchmarking and system-level workload validation.