Staff Design Verification Engineer – Coherent Interconnect

As the pioneers who introduced RISC-V to the world, SiFive is transforming the future of compute by bringing the limitless potential of RISC-V to the highest performance and most data-intensive applications in the world. SiFive’s unrivaled compute platforms are continuing to enable leading technology companies around the world to innovate, optimize and deliver the most advanced solutions of tomorrow across every market segment of chip design, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, automotive, data center, mobile, and consumer. With SiFive, the future of RISC-V has no limits.

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Job Description:

The Role

SiFive is looking for a Staff Design Verification Engineer to drive verification of a next-generation cache-coherent interconnect subsystem used in high-performance SoCs. In this role, you will own complex verification problems spanning coherent data movement, protocol correctness, ordering, quality-of-service behavior, and subsystem integration across multiple interface types. The scope aligns to the Interconnect horizontal area and the coherent interconnect subsystem, with adjacent responsibilities around protocol conversion, bridges, and integration behavior.

This is a Staff individual-contributor role. We are looking for someone who can go beyond executing assigned tests and instead define strategy, identify gaps early, solve complex verification problems, and raise the quality bar for the broader verification effort.

Responsibilities

• Own verification planning and execution for a scalable cache-coherent interconnect subsystem, from block-level verification through subsystem integration.

• Develop and maintain robust verification environments, checkers, scoreboards, stimulus, and coverage models for coherent traffic, ordering rules, backpressure, flow control, and error handling.

• Verify protocol adaptation and integration across multiple interface types and bridge paths, including conversion, buffering, deinterleaving, and related data movement behaviors.

• Drive verification of advanced interconnect behaviors such as QoS handling, arbitration policy, virtual-network behavior, and transport-level correctness.

• Define high-value directed and constrained-random test scenarios that expose corner cases in coherency, concurrency, ordering, credits, and integration.

• Partner closely with architecture, design, formal, and software teams to clarify requirements, close ambiguities early, and accelerate debug and signoff.

• Analyze failures efficiently, isolate root cause, and drive fixes across RTL, assertions, testbench infrastructure, and test content.

• Improve verification methodology, infrastructure, and productivity for the broader interconnect verification effort, not just the block immediately assigned to you.

• Contribute to review quality across specs, verification plans, coverage closure, and debug strategy.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field.

• 7+ years of experience in ASIC or SoC design verification.

• Strong hands-on experience with SystemVerilog and UVM-based verification.

• Strong understanding of cache-coherent systems, on-chip interconnects, or memory-system verification.

• Experience verifying complex protocol behavior such as ordering, flow control, backpressure, buffering, arbitration, and error handling.

• Experience building reusable testbench components, assertions, coverage models, and debug infrastructure.

• Strong debugging skills and ability to root-cause issues across specification, RTL, and testbench layers.

• Ability to work effectively across architecture, design, and verification teams in a fast-moving environment.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with coherent interconnects, NoCs, memory fabrics, or large subsystem integration.

• Experience with one or more industry protocols such as AXI, CHI, CXL, UCIe, or similar high-performance interface standards.

• Experience with formal verification, performance-oriented verification, or emulation/FPGA-assisted debug.

• Experience verifying protocol-conversion or bridge-heavy subsystems.

• Familiarity with Python or other scripting languages used for DV infrastructure and automation.

• Experience mentoring other engineers and raising team-wide verification quality.

What Success Looks Like

• Verification plans are complete, concrete, and aligned to the real architectural risks.

• Critical bugs are found early, reproduced efficiently, and closed with durable fixes.

• Coverage and test quality improve meaningfully under your ownership.

• The coherent interconnect verification effort becomes more scalable, predictable, and reusable because of your contributions.

• Design and architecture teams rely on you as a strong technical partner for difficult verification and debug problems.

You will be part of a high performance Out-of-Order Core team that focuses on verification of components such as Frontend, Mid-Core, Load-Store Unit, Integer and Floating Execution Unit, as well as Vector Unit that implement the latest RVV.

BS/MS Degree in EE, CE or CS

5-8 years relevant experience with IP/Component functional verification, preferably in Core/CPU verification

Deep understand of computer architecture is desired

Experienced developer using Object Oriented Programing principles

In addition to base pay, this role may be eligible for variable/ incentive compensation and/ or equity.  In addition, this role is eligible for a comprehensive, competitive benefits package which may include healthcare and retirement plans, paid time off, and more! 

Additional Information:

This position requires a successful background and reference checks and satisfactory proof of your right to work in

Any offer of employment for this position is also contingent on the Company verifying that you are a authorized for access to export-controlled technology under applicable export control laws or, if you are not already authorized, our ability to successfully obtain any necessary export license(s) or other approvals.

SiFive is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.

As an E-Verify employer, we use this system to confirm the employment eligibility of all new hires in accordance with federal law. All applicants will be required to complete a Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification, upon hire. We do not use E-Verify to pre-screen job candidates and will comply with all E-Verify regulations.