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Graphcore, part of the SoftBank Group, is a leading innovator in AI compute hardware and infrastructure. This role focuses on developing specialized silicon validation and diagnostics tools for next-generation AI SoCs, working at the intersection of hardware architecture, diagnostics, and software engineering.
Unlike traditional validation roles that execute test plans, this position is responsible for developing diagnostic software and stress tools that expose hardware failures, characterize silicon behavior, and improve platform observability during bring-up and validation. You will extend existing Arm-developed diagnostics technologies to support Graphcore's next-generation AI silicon while developing Graphcore-specific capabilities.
Key Responsibilities:
- Learn and extend existing Arm diagnostics tools to support Graphcore's AI platform
- Develop specialized diagnostics and stress-testing software for CPU, memory, interconnect, PCIe, and other system components
- Build reusable validation utilities that integrate into the existing validation framework
- Develop tools that expose intermittent hardware failures including silent data corruption, timing-related issues, and hardware instability
- Design configurable diagnostic applications supporting multiple silicon revisions, platforms, and execution environments
- Develop automation for executing diagnostics across server and rack-scale validation environments
- Collaborate with hardware architects, firmware engineers, and validation teams to understand new hardware capabilities and identify missing diagnostics
- Debug low-level hardware, firmware, operating system, and driver interactions
- Analyze diagnostic output and improve fault isolation methodologies
- Develop software that enables engineers to reproduce and investigate difficult hardware failures
- Contribute reusable libraries and utilities that improve engineering productivity across validation teams
Success in this role means extending existing diagnostics technologies, developing new tools for emerging hardware capabilities, building reusable software components that integrate seamlessly, improving hardware observability and root-cause isolation, detecting intermittent hardware failures, delivering configurable diagnostics that scale across platforms, and working effectively across cross-functional teams.
Requirements:
Essential:
- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or related technical discipline
- Experience developing hardware diagnostics, system validation software, firmware validation tools, or low-level systems software
- Strong software development skills in Python and C/C++
- Strong Linux systems experience
- Strong understanding of modern server platform architecture (CPU, memory, PCIe, storage, networking, firmware, OS, device drivers)
- Experience debugging hardware/software interactions across multiple platform layers
- Experience developing diagnostics, stress testing, or hardware validation software
- Experience with server platforms, embedded systems, or SoC validation
- Strong analytical and debugging skills
- Experience collaborating across hardware, firmware, software, and validation teams
- Excellent communication and problem-solving skills
Desirable:
- Arm-based server platforms
- AI accelerators or high-performance computing systems
- Silent Data Corruption (SDC) testing
- Hardware stress testing
- Power transient analysis
- Hardware fault injection methodologies
- Firmware validation
- Silicon bring-up
- Performance characterization
- Hardware telemetry and observability
- BMC firmware or server management
- RAS (Reliability, Availability, Serviceability) technologies
- Validation across subsystems: CPU scaling and cache behavior, memory (DDR/HBM) bandwidth/latency/NUMA effects, interconnect contention, PCIe/I-O throughput and latency, high-speed I/O validation
