Senior Validation Engineer, AI Accelerator

About the company

Our client is a well-funded California start-up building custom ASICs for AI inference and training, delivering better performance per watt than general-purpose GPUs.

With first silicon in hand and customer deployments ramping, they are scaling the team that proves the platform is production ready.

The role

You will own validation of the accelerator platform, from silicon bring-up through the runtime, compiler and model stack.

Working with hardware, firmware and software teams, you will make sure every release is correct, stable and fast before it reaches customers.

What you’ll do

• Build and own the validation strategy for silicon, firmware, runtime and compiler releases

• Develop automated test frameworks in Python and C++ covering functional, stress and regression testing

• Validate model accuracy and performance across LLM and vision workloads on single and multi-chip systems

• Debug failures across the stack with hardware, firmware and software teams, driving issues to root cause

• Run CI and lab infrastructure, and report quality metrics that gate each release

What you’ll bring

• 6+ years in validation or test engineering, with 3+ on GPUs, AI accelerators or other complex silicon

• Strong Python, working C++ and solid Linux systems knowledge

• Experience with post-silicon or system-level validation, and debugging on real hardware

• Understanding of ML workloads in PyTorch or JAX, including accuracy and performance benchmarking

• Experience building test automation and CI pipelines, with a degree in CS, CE, EE or equivalent

Nice to have

• First silicon bring-up or pre-silicon (emulation, FPGA) experience

• Knowledge of MLPerf, vLLM or inference benchmarking

• Familiarity with PCIe, HBM or high-speed interconnects such as RDMA

• Prior AI accelerator, GPU or hyperscaler silicon experience

Why join

• Own quality for a custom AI silicon platform and shape how it is validated

• Work with leading GPU and accelerator engineers and see your work in production

Location and package

• Location: On-site or hybrid in the San Francisco Bay Area, California

• Base salary: $190,000 to $225,000, depending on experience and level

• Equity: Meaningful early-stage stock options

• Benefits: Medical, dental and vision cover, 401(k), flexible PTO and relocation support

Interested? Get in touch for a confidential conversation about the role and the company.

Darwin Recruitment is acting as an Employment Agency in relation to this vacancy.

Vuldyn Naidoo