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.