Lead Emulation Engineer

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.

• Experience supporting pre-silicon and post-silicon debug.

Leadership Expectations

• Independently own emulation bring-up and execution for major IPs/subsystems.

• Lead technical discussions with DV, RTL, firmware, and architecture teams.

• Mentor engineers and improve emulation productivity.

• Drive issues to closure while working against aggressive project/tape-out schedules.

• Establish reusable emulation flows and best practices.

Education

B.E./B.Tech/M.E./M.Tech in Electronics, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, VLSI, or a related discipline.