Architect Labs · San Francisco
Hardware & ElectricalHardwareFullTime
Architect is a frontier AI lab for custom silicon. We partner with frontier labs, clouds / neoclouds, physical AI companies, and advanced fabs to tape-out custom chips co-designed for next-generation AI workloads. Our goal is to compress end-to-end software to silicon timelines, and maximize intelligence per watt and per dollar for the world. We are a small exceptional team across silicon, systems, software and frontier AI. Our team have led research teams at nearly every frontier AI lab, and at some of the most complex SoCs in the world.
As a Founding Member of the Technical Staff on the Design Verification team at Architect, you'll own the verification strategy behind AI-generated designs taping out on leading foundries. You'll work at the intersection of rigorous hardware verification and AI-driven design automation.
Review AI-driven test plan, and validation strategy for internal and external SoC projects.
Provide domain-specific expertise to our AI/ML teams, including architectural and microarchitectural checks, validation modularity, checkers, coverage models, and interface protocols — helping encode DV best practices into our AI-driven flows.
Independently define, drive, and coordinate validation, verification, and integration flows across multiple IPs, including checkpoints and collateral handoffs.
Collaborate with architecture, design, and AI/ML leads to generate simulation- and emulation-ready collateral that scales across projects.
Track emerging trends in semiconductor verification and AI-driven design automation to keep our methodology cutting-edge in quality, scalability, and throughput.
Qualifications & Skills:
Degree: Bachelor's, Master's, or PhD in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a closely related field.
Tapeout Experience: 5+ years (10+ preferred) working on advanced-node tapeouts at top chip companies or fast-moving silicon startups. End-to-end silicon delivery is a strong plus.
Verification Expertise: Deep expertise in verification/validation, emulation, and architectural and system-level verification of industry-standard IPs. Proven track record defining microarchitectural checkers and monitors, modeling IP and SoC validation platforms, and developing modular, reusable validation collateral.
Coding: Strong skills in SystemVerilog, UVM, and C/C++ for test environments. Python strongly preferred.
Subsystem Depth: Hands-on verification experience in at least one of the following areas:
ARM/AMBA protocols (APB, AHB, AXI, and ideally ACE for coherent CPU interfaces)
CPU subsystems — boot, interrupts, debug, coherency
Memory controllers and PHY — LPDDR/DDR interfaces, controller-level verification
On-chip interconnect / NoC — routing, arbitration, QoS, bandwidth
NPU / ML accelerator cores — datapath, scratchpad memory, DMA engines
Security IPs and/or working with secure enclaves
Methodology: Hands-on experience with simulation and emulation flows and methodologies. Experience mapping IP and SoC designs to FPGA prototypes for fast functional verification.
Execution: Excellent problem-solving, collaboration, and communication skills with strong attention to detail. Ability to work independently and drive cross-functional alignment.
Leadership: Ability and desire to lead the DV function over time as the team scales.
Bonus:
SoC-level DV experience — bringing up full systems with memory controller + PHY + CPU connectivity, validating top-level integration.
Deep experience with AMBA protocols, specifically ACE for coherent CPU-memory access.
FPGA prototyping experience (ideally Xilinx Vivado/Vitis).
Verification experience spanning multiple of: interconnects, CPU subsystems, ARM AMBA, memory controllers, NPUs.
Tapeout experience at frontier AI chip startups (MatX, Groq, Cerebras, d-Matrix, etc.) or tier-1 silicon companies (Apple, NVIDIA, Google, Qualcomm, Broadcom, AMD).
Competitive salary and meaningful equity stake
Fast-paced startup with autonomy and visible impact
Cutting-edge challenges at the intersection of AI and silicon design