Senior Execution and Quality Validation Engineer

About us

Graphcore is one of the world’s leading innovators in Artificial Intelligence compute.

It is developing hardware, software, and systems infrastructure that will unlock the next generation of AI breakthroughs and power the widespread adoption of AI solutions across every industry.

As part of the SoftBank Group, Graphcore is a member of an elite family of companies responsible for some of the world’s most transformative technologies. Together, they share a bold vision: to enable Artificial Super Intelligence and ensure its benefits are accessible to everyone.

Graphcore’s teams are drawn from diverse backgrounds and bring a broad range of skills and perspectives. A melting pot of AI research specialists, silicon designers, software engineers, and systems architects, Graphcore enjoys a culture of continuous learning and constant innovation.

Job Summary

Reporting to the Validation leadership team, the Senior Execution and Quality Validation Engineer will be responsible for executing validation plans, developing automation solutions, and improving product quality across Graphcore silicon and platform technologies.

Working closely with architecture, design, verification, firmware, software, systems engineering, and validation teams, the successful candidate will contribute to scalable validation methodologies, improve test coverage and execution efficiency, and help ensure products meet high standards of functionality, reliability, and performance before customer deployment.

The role requires strong technical skills, attention to detail, and a passion for improving validation quality through effective execution, automation, and continuous improvement.

The Team

The Validation Execution and Quality team sits within the Validation organisation and is responsible for improving validation effectiveness, test execution efficiency, product quality, and release readiness across Graphcore silicon and platform products.

The team develops validation methodologies, automation frameworks, test execution infrastructure, and quality processes that enable engineering teams to execute validation activities at scale. Working closely with validation, architecture, firmware, software, systems, and design teams, the group helps ensure products are thoroughly validated before release.

Responsibilities and Duties

Execute validation strategies for silicon, subsystem, and platform technologies across functional, performance, reliability, and stress testing

Plan, optimize, verify, and test critical electronic systems, including silicon, FPGA-based platforms, test systems, and associated validation infrastructure

Develop and execute validation plans to ensure products meet quality, reliability, and performance objectives

Create detailed test plans from high-level validation requirements and test cases, ensuring timely execution and high-quality results

Design, develop, and maintain automation frameworks that enable efficient execution of test plans, regression suites, and validation activities

Support silicon and platform validation activities from bring-up through product readiness

Analyse validation results and system behaviour to identify issues and opportunities for improvement

Collaborate with architecture, design, verification, firmware, software, systems engineering, and validation teams to implement new validation requirements and improve test coverage

Integrate new validation capabilities and test solutions into existing validation infrastructure to improve productivity, quality, and execution efficiency

Develop automated data collection, analysis, and reporting solutions to improve engineering visibility and decision-making

Evaluate design features to identify functional, compatibility, integration, and reliability risks

Investigate validation failures using structured debug and root-cause analysis methodologies

Contribute to improvements in validation techniques, workflows, automation, and engineering processes

Support power, performance, and system-level validation activities through development of scalable validation infrastructure and methodologies

Contribute to validation best practices, documentation, and engineering standards

Act as a quality-focused validation engineer, helping identify and resolve issues before products reach customers

Candidate Profile

Essential:

Experience in silicon validation, hardware validation, system validation, or related engineering disciplines

Strong understanding of validation methodologies, test planning, test execution, and quality processes

Experience developing automation frameworks for validation, regression execution, and test orchestration

Strong Python programming skills for automation, data analysis, and infrastructure development

Strong understanding of hardware systems, silicon bring-up, and validation workflows

Experience translating high-level requirements into structured validation plans and test cases

Experience analysing validation results and participating in root-cause investigations for complex technical issues

Understanding of validation coverage, quality metrics, release readiness criteria, and risk assessment methodologies

Experience collaborating across architecture, design, verification, firmware, software, systems, and validation teams

Excellent analytical, diagnostic, and problem-solving skills

Strong communication skills and the ability to work effectively across multidisciplinary engineering teams

Desirable

Experience with post-silicon bring-up and system integration activities

Experience developing regression systems and automated test execution infrastructure

Experience with FPGA-based validation environments

Experience automating laboratory equipment and validation environments

Familiarity with CI/CD systems and continuous testing methodologies

Experience developing dashboards, reporting systems, or engineering analytics tools

Experience with C, C++, or embedded software development

Experience working on AI accelerator, high-performance compute, or semiconductor products

Experience contributing to validation standards, quality metrics, and engineering best practices