Job Description

Job title: Staff Engineer – FPGA Prototype/Emulation – Platform Software & FPGA Team

Join the RISC-V Revolution!

About GlobalFoundries

GlobalFoundries is a leading full-service semiconductor foundry providing a unique combination of design, development, and fabrication services to some of the world’s most inspired technology companies. With a global manufacturing footprint spanning three continents, GlobalFoundries makes possible the technologies and systems that transform industries and give customers the power to shape their markets. For more information, visit www.gf.com

Introduction

We are seeking a skilled Staff Engineer in FPGA prototyping and emulation to join our team and contribute to FPGA designs for our CPUs (64-bit and 32-bit) and SoCs. This role is important because FPGA platforms play a key part in validation and in enabling a shift-left software development approach.

This is a unique opportunity to contribute across the full silicon-to-software lifecycle, combining software engineering with post-silicon validation to ensure high-quality, safety-critical SoC solutions.

What You’ll Do

• Design, build, and enhance FPGA and emulation platform solutions for single-core and multi-core clusters, integrating custom and 3rd party system IP as needed.
• Perform pre-silicon CPU and system validation using FPGA and hardware emulation platforms to ensure functional correctness and performance targets are met.
• Analyze system performance on FPGA platforms and help optimize for area and speed by effectively leveraging available FPGA resources.
• Drive the development of tailored FPGA prototyping platforms based on customer specifications and evolving project requirements.
• Collaborate closely with customer teams to enable rapid prototyping of their SoCs, supporting both hardware evaluation and software development needs.
• Develop, document, and execute pre-silicon validation test plans, including corner cases, integration scenarios, and debug strategies.
• Integrate, verify, and bring up daughter boards, custom IP, and peripheral modules in real-time device environments.
• Provide technical support and troubleshooting for FPGA systems in both customer-facing and internal R&D environments.

Ideally, you’ll have

• 3–5 years of hands-on experience with leading FPGA platforms such as proFPGA, VPS, and Veloce.
• Strong understanding of FPGA architecture, system-level design, and prototyping flow from RTL to implementation.
• Strong understanding of verification and validation fundamentals, including debug of complex system-level issues.
• Hands-on experience with integrating and bringing up daughter cards, custom IP blocks, and peripherals at the board and system level.
• Familiarity with SoC boot flows and platform initialization for ARM- or RISC-V-based architectures.
• Working knowledge of MIPS, ARM, or RISC-V based IP subsystems and their integration within FPGA platforms.
• Strong debugging and problem-solving skills in both Windows and Linux environments.
• Proficient in scripting languages such as Python, Bash, and TCL to automate design, build, and validation flows.
• Experience with industry-standard digital design tools such as Vivado.

You might also have

• Experience working on CPUs or other high-complexity, pipelined digital logic products.
• Familiarity with different instruction set architectures, such as RISC-V, ARM64, and x86_64, and understanding of coherency protocols for multi-core clusters.
• Background in hardware-software co-design and early software bring-up.
• Experience working with CI/CD and agile tools such as Jenkins, Git, and Jira.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with a strong customer-oriented mindset.

GlobalFoundries is an equal opportunity employer, cultivating a diverse and inclusive workforce. We believe having a multicultural workplace enhances productivity, efficiency and innovation whilst our employees feel truly respected, valued and heard.

As an affirmative employer, all qualified applicants are considered for employment regardless of age, ethnicity, marital status, citizenship, race, religion, political affiliation, gender, sexual orientation and medical and/or physical abilities.

All offers of employment with GlobalFoundries are conditioned upon the successful completion of background checks, medical screenings as applicable and subject to the respective local laws and regulations.