Senior Formal Verification Engineer Silicon DV Santa Clara, CA Santa Clara, CA Full-time 200000 - 500000

Responsibilities

Own and drive formal verification for complex SoC blocks—CPUs, control processors, floating-point units, vector/SIMD engines, and datapath-heavy designs.

Write high-quality SVA properties and formal testbenches to prove functional correctness, including end-to-end and datapath-equivalence checks.

Apply full proofs, bounded model checking, assume-guarantee reasoning, and abstraction to close proofs on deep-state designs.

Debug counterexamples and drive convergence on hard proofs using abstraction, constraints, and decomposition.

Verify floating-point and arithmetic units for IEEE-754 compliance using formal datapath and equivalence checking.

Build reusable formal apps: connectivity, register/CSR, deadlock/liveness, X-propagation, and control-path proofs.

Define constraints and modeling assumptions, and prove them consistent and non-over-constraining.

Drive formal coverage closure and integrate it into the overall verification signoff plan.

Partner with architects, RTL, and simulation teams to align on what to prove formally versus in simulation.

Maintain automated infrastructure, scripting, and CI hooks for formal regression and proof tracking.

Use modern AI-assisted verification and debug workflows to improve productivity and coverage.

Contribute to a culture of technical excellence and continuous improvement.

Required Qualifications

10+ years in functional verification, with substantial hands-on formal verification of complex digital systems.

Track record solving hard formal problems—CPU/processor DV, floating-point/arithmetic datapath, or vector/SIMD units.

Deep expertise with SystemVerilog Assertions (SVA) and formal property development.

Hands-on experience with JasperGold, VC Formal, or Questa Formal / OneSpin.

Experience developing constraints and proving them consistent and non-over-constraining.

Strong grasp of computer architecture, microarchitecture, SoC design, and digital fundamentals.

Understanding of floating-point arithmetic, IEEE-754, and datapath correctness.

Strong analytical skills and rigorous, mathematical reasoning about hardware.

Strong scripting and automation skills for build, regression, and CI pipelines.

Ability to work effectively in a collaborative, multidisciplinary team.

Preferred Qualifications

Experience with formal datapath verification and arithmetic equivalence checking (e.g., C/C++/SystemC reference models vs. RTL).

Experience verifying vector, SIMD, or matrix/tensor compute units.

Experience with security verification (secure/non-secure isolation, information-flow, fault/side-channel) using formal methods.

Experience with formal protocol verification of standard interconnects (e.g., AMBA AXI/ACE, CHI) using assertion IP.

Familiarity with cache coherence, memory-consistency, and interconnect protocol verification.

Familiarity with clock-domain-crossing (CDC) and reset-domain-crossing (RDC) formal signoff.

Experience with sequential equivalence checking (SEC) and low-power (UPF) formal verification.

Experience with AI, machine learning, or edge AI hardware.

Familiarity with robotics, drones, autonomous vehicles, or industrial automation systems.

Experience with functional-safety standards such as ISO 26262, IEC 61508, IEC 61511, or ISO 13849.

Experience using modern AI tools and workflows to accelerate engineering productivity.

Background in CPUs, GPUs, AI accelerators, networking and communications silicon, storage and data movement architectures, robotics and autonomous systems, automotive and ADAS platforms, aerospace and defense systems, real-time and safety-critical computing, or functional safety architectures and methodologies.

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