Staff Design Verification Engineer – Coherent Interconnect

About SiFive

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.

At SiFive, we are always excited to connect with talented individuals, who are just as passionate about driving innovation and changing the world as we are.  

Our constant innovation and ongoing success is down to our amazing teams of incredibly talented people, who collaborate and support each other to come up with truly groundbreaking ideas and solutions.  Solutions that will have a huge impact on people's lives; making the world a better place, one processor at a time. 

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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, with particular emphasis on CXL-related protocol behavior, bridge paths, and subsystem integration.

This is a Staff Engineer individual-contributor role for a candidate who can independently own complex verification problems, define strong verification plans, identify risk early, and raise verification quality across the broader interconnect effort.

In this role, you will work across architecture, RTL, formal, and design verification teams to verify coherent data movement, protocol correctness, ordering, flow control, QoS behavior, and subsystem behavior across multiple interfaces, with a strong focus on CXL-oriented verification scenarios.

Responsibilities

• Drive verification of subsystem behavior across interface boundaries, protocol adaptation layers, and bridge paths, with emphasis on CXL and related coherent interconnect flows.
• Develop and maintain robust verification environments, checkers, scoreboards, assertions, stimulus, and coverage models for coherent traffic, ordering rules, backpressure, flow control, buffering behavior, QoS, and error handling.
• Define high-value directed and constrained-random scenarios that expose corner cases in coherency, concurrency, ordering, credits, arbitration, latency-sensitive flows, and bandwidth-sensitive behavior.
• Partner closely with architecture, RTL, formal, and software teams to review specifications, close ambiguities early, and improve overall verification quality.
• Analyze failures efficiently, isolate root cause, and drive fixes across RTL, assertions, testbench infrastructure, and test content.
• Contribute reusable methodology, infrastructure, and automation improvements that benefit the broader horizontal interconnect verification effort, not just the block directly assigned to you.
• Mentor engineers and help raise verification quality across the team through reviews, technical guidance, and stronger verification practices.

Minimum Qualifications

• BS or MS in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field.
• 7+ years of experience in ASIC or SoC design verification, with strong hands-on ownership of complex block- or subsystem-level verification problems appropriate for a Staff / T4 role.
• Strong protocol knowledge in CXL and at least one of CHI, ACE, AXI, or similar high-performance interconnect standards.
• Strong hands-on experience with SystemVerilog and UVM-based verification, including building reusable verification infrastructure for complex hardware subsystems.
• Strong understanding of cache-coherent systems, on-chip interconnects, memory-subsystem behavior, and verification of ordering and flow-control semantics.
• Experience creating test plans, assertions, coverage models, scoreboards, and debug workflows for complex hardware subsystems.
• Strong debugging skills with the ability to root-cause issues across specification, RTL, and testbench layers.
• Strong scripting and automation skills in Python or similar languages.
• Strong communication skills and the ability to work effectively across architecture, RTL, and verification teams in a fast-moving environment.

Preferred Qualifications

• Direct experience verifying coherent interconnect, cache, or memory-subsystem IP in high-performance SoCs.
• Experience with protocol-conversion or bridge-heavy subsystems, especially where CXL protocol behavior or adaptation is a major part of system validation.
• Experience with formal verification, performance-oriented verification, or emulation / FPGA-assisted debug.
• Experience mentoring other engineers and influencing verification quality beyond immediate ownership scope.
• Familiarity with large subsystem integration challenges involving coherent traffic, ordering, arbitration, QoS, and error handling across multiple interface types.

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.

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

United States of America

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.