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