Principal SoC Verification Engineer

Microsoft's hardware teams incubate advanced technologies and build deep partnerships with internal research, product planning, and marketing teams. Microsoft ships tens of millions of hardware products every year, including the Xbox, Surface devices, HoloLens, accessories, and much more.
Our opportunities represent a variety of disciplines including, but not limited to, design, verification, performance modeling and DevOps supporting the development of custom silicon.
We are looking for the best and brightest to join us in designing for the future !ResponsibilitiesThe silicon computing development team in Raleigh is seeking passionate, driven, and intellectually curious computer/electrical engineers to deliver premium-quality designs once considered impossible. Our team is involved in numerous projects within Microsoft developing custom silicon for a diverse set of systems ranging from traditional computing solutions to artificial intelligence and augmented reality. We are responsible for delivering cutting-edge, custom CPU and SoC designs that can perform complex and high-performance functions in an extremely efficient manner.
In this role, you will:

• Establish yourself as a technical team lead of a pre-silicon verification team for the development of owning verification of SOC and integration of it components and/or SoC level flows
• Become an expert on the overall architecture, implementation of complex features/flows/protocols, and their interactions with other parts of the SoC, with the platform, and with software.
• Drive product requirements awareness and methodology across the team
• Develop verification strategy, testplans, requirements, environments, tools, and methodologies.
• Define, document, and implement a from-scratch UVM verification environment including agents and scoreboards for a design.
• Apply your knowledge of verification principles and techniques and your judgement to write test plans and implement them by developing tests, test generators, test benches, checkers, coverage, and other verification collateral.
• Run tests, debug failures to root cause, and recommend fixes.
• Apply your growth mindset to learn and adapt in a complex and dynamic environment.
• Engage with partners to drive continuous improvement to both the design, to verification plans/collateral, and to methodology to prevent, reduce, and/or find bugs sooner, more easily, or more reliably.
• Mentor team members for a growing team
• Apply your One Microsoft mentality to collaborate with and influence architects, logic designers, post-silicon validators, other verification engineers, and IP and tool providers.

Qualifications Required qualifications

• BS/MS in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science or related degree OR work experience equivalent to a completed degree
• 8+ years of experience working on Computer Architecture and SoC design and verification principles, including:

• using industry standard HDLs like SystemVerilog
• developing and using verification environments in industry standard languages like SVTB UVM or formal verification
• writing scripts/software with industry standard languages like Python or C/C++

Preferred qualifications

• Verification, logic development, or validation experience as part of a CPU, SoC and/or IP development team
• Demonstrated expertise in one or more of the following:

• CPU cores, protocols, and related firmware

• Coherent and non-coherent fabric IPs and protocols
• Memory Controller/PHY IPs, DDR protocols, and related firmware/BIOS/MRC
• PCIe Controller/PHY IPs, protocols and related firmware
• USB Controller/PHY IPs, protocols and related firmware
• Manageability IPs, protocols, and related firmware

• Security IPs, firmware, SoC level features/flows, OS/software interactions.

• Knowledge of full chip and system level flows and protocols
• Strong communication , collaboration and teamwork skills and ability to contribute to diverse and inclusive teams.

Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role. These requirements include, but are not limited to the following specialized security screenings: Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud Background Check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.
Hardware Engineering IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $133,600 - $256,800 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $173,200 - $282,200 per year.
Microsoft has different base pay ranges for different work locations within the United States, which allows us to pay employees competitively and consistently in different geographic markets (see below). The range above reflects the potential base pay across the U.S. for this role (except as noted below); the applicable base pay range will depend on what ultimately is determined to be the candidate's primary work location. Individual base pay depends on various factors, in addition to primary work location, such as complexity and responsibility of role, job duties/requirements, and relevant experience and skills. Base pay ranges are reviewed and typically updated each year. Offers are made within the base pay range applicable at the time.
At Microsoft certain roles are eligible for additional rewards, including merit increases, annual bonus and stock. These awards are allocated based on individual performance. In addition, certain roles also have the opportunity to earn sales incentives based on revenue or utilization, depending on the terms of the plan and the employee's role. Benefits/perks listed here may vary depending on the nature of employment with Microsoft and the country work location. U.S.-based employees have access to healthcare benefits, a 401(k) plan and company match, short-term and long-term disability coverage, basic life insurance, wellbeing benefits, paid vacation time, paid sick and mental health time, and several paid holidays, among others.
Our commitment to pay equity
We are committed to the principle of pay equity - paying employees equitably for substantially similar work. To learn more about pay equity and our other commitments to increase representation and strengthen our culture of inclusion, check out our annual Diversity & Inclusion Report. ( https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/diversity/inside-microsoft/annual-report )
Understanding roles at Microsoft
The top of this page displays the role for which the base pay ranges apply - Hardware Engineering IC5.
The way we define roles includes two things: discipline (the type of work) and career stage (scope and complexity). The career stage has two parts - the first identifies whether the role is a manager (M), an individual contributor (IC), an admin-technician-retail (ATR) job, or an intern. The second part identifies the relative seniority of the role - a higher number (or later letter alphabetically in the case of ATR) indicates greater scope and complexity.
Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form .
Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.