Principal Power & Performance Validation Engineer

The Power and Performance Validation team sits within the Architecture and Validation organisation and is responsible for validating the performance, efficiency and thermal behaviour of Graphcore silicon and systems.

The team supports the full product lifecycle, from early architectural modelling through to first silicon bring-up, characterization and production readiness.

Engineers work closely with cross-functional teams globally to debug complex issues, optimize workloads and continuously improve validation infrastructure and methodologies.

• Define and lead validation strategies for power, thermal and performance characterization of AI compute silicon and platforms
• Lead, mentor and support a team of validation engineers, providing technical guidance, coaching and career development
• Drive planning, prioritisation and execution of validation activities across multiple projects and milestones
• Develop comprehensive validation plans covering functional, stress, workload and corner-case scenarios
• Lead post-silicon bring-up and characterization activities for power and performance validation
• Drive validation of CPU, memory, interconnect and high-speed I/O subsystems under complex workload conditions
• Develop scalable automation frameworks, regression infrastructure and reporting tools using Python
• Design and execute benchmark workloads, parameter sweeps and performance experiments to identify optimization opportunities
• Collaborate with architecture, RTL, firmware, software and systems teams to debug and resolve complex technical issues
• Define validation metrics, pass/fail criteria and reporting methodologies to ensure repeatable and high-quality analysis
• Guide development of custom workload generators and micro-benchmarks where required
• Analyse power, thermal and performance data to identify bottlenecks and recommend improvements
• Contribute to continuous improvement of validation processes, tooling and engineering practices
• Communicate technical findings, project status, risks and recommendations clearly to stakeholders and engineering leadership
• Support hiring activities, onboarding and team growth initiatives

• Strong experience in power and performance validation, silicon characterization or system performance engineering
• Experience leading or managing engineering teams within a technical environment
• Deep understanding of modern SoC architecture, including CPU, memory, interconnect and high-speed I/O technologies
• Strong Linux systems knowledge and low-level performance analysis experience
• Strong Python programming skills for automation, orchestration and data analysis
• Experience with benchmarking and profiling tools such as stress-ng, fio, perf, iperf or equivalent technologies
• Experience debugging complex hardware and software interactions
• Ability to define structured validation methodologies, workload models and test strategies
• Strong analytical skills with the ability to interpret large datasets and identify system bottlenecks
• Strong communication, stakeholder management and cross-functional collaboration skills
• Ability to lead complex technical initiatives across geographically distributed teams

• Experience with AI accelerator, GPU or high-performance compute architectures
• Experience with pre-silicon modelling or simulation environments
• Knowledge of power management technologies and silicon characterization methodologies
• Programming experience in C/C++ for low-level system or benchmark development
• Familiarity with hardware instrumentation and telemetry systems
• Experience working with high core-count or large-scale compute systems
• Experience scaling or building technical engineering teams