FPGA Jobs in Bristol.
All active FPGA roles based in Bristol.
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- Define and own the system architecture roadmap, balancing performance, power, and scalability.
- Contribute to system-level design from concept through production, coordinating with chip design, mechanical, and manufacturing teams.
- Specify system interfaces, power delivery networks, interconnects, and control subsystems.
- Guide board and platform design for early bring-up and validation.
- Partner with the software and firmware leads to ensure seamless integration and coherent system-level performance.
- Evaluate emerging technologies and components to inform architectural decisions.
- Act as a technical mentor, raising the bar for design discipline and documentation across the team.
- Represent system architecture in technical reviews, partner discussions, and customer engagements.
- Proven experience as a Systems Architect, SoC Architect, or similar role in semiconductor or high-performance computing domains.
- Deep understanding of system-level design, including power, thermal, I/O, memory, and interconnect architectures.
- Strong grasp of digital design flows.
- Experience taking complex hardware systems from concept through to mass production.
- Demonstrated ability to define and manage system requirements and trade-offs.
- Comfortable working across many disciplines, hardware, firmware, and software.
- Excellent communicator who can bridge technical depth with practical execution.
- Background in AI acceleration, HPC, or data-centric architectures.
- Experience with FPGA prototyping and system bring-up.
- Familiarity with modern toolchains and modelling environments (SystemC, MATLAB, etc.).
- Prior start-up or scale-up experience, someone who thrives in ambiguity and fast iteration.
How we work
- Ownership and execution: you will have full agency to drive your work forward
- Rapid iteration: we all work directly with top leadership to move from idea to hardware on ambitious timelines
- Full-stack engagement: hardware, software, silicon, and modelling teams all work closely together to create a product with generational impact
- Optimistic and pragmatic: we possess the will to win, and to do the hard work to get us there
- Team player mentality: the mission is bigger than any of us, and we have the curiosity and technical focus to see the best idea shipped, no matter who’s it is
About us
- Founded in 2022, team of 80+ which is expanding rapidly
- Modern, open offices in London and Bristol
- Collaborative, problem-solving culture built on deep curiosity, entrepreneurial initiative and technical fluency
Export control and security clearance
Certain roles may involve working on technologies subject to export restrictions. Applicants may be required to undergo additional eligibility checks to ensure compliance with applicable law.
Ready to apply?
Apply to FractileAbout Graphcore
At Graphcore, we’re building the future of AI compute.
We’re a team of semiconductor, software and AI experts, with deep experience in creating the complete AI compute stack - from silicon and software to infrastructure at datacenter scale.
As part of the SoftBank Group, backed by significant long-term investment, we are delivering key technology into the fast-growing SoftBank AI ecosystem.
To meet the vast and exciting AI opportunity, Graphcore is expanding its teams around the world.
We are bringing together the brightest minds to solve the toughest problems, in a place where everyone has the opportunity to make an impact on the company, our products and the future of artificial intelligence.
The Team
The Verification team sits within the Silicon Design organisation. We ensure that the RTL delivered by Logical Design and used by Physical Design team implements Graphcore’s architectural needs and meets the company's quality standards. As a Director of Silicon Verification, you will help lead this multi-site organisation, define verification strategies across multiple silicon programs, and drive best in class execution to ensure high-quality, high-performance silicon delivery.
Role Summary
We are seeking a proven leader to help direct Graphcore’s verification strategy and methodologies. This role sets direction for the verification lifecycle including - planning, infrastructure, execution, coverage closure, debug strategy and sign-off for Graphcore’s complex, high performance AI accelerators.
Reporting to the Senior Director of Verification the Director will partner closely with other teams such as Architecture, Logical Design, Physical Design, DFT, Systems as well as Program Management teams to ensure accurate implementation, accelerated debug cycles, high coverage confidence and predictable silicon delivery.
Responsibilities
Leadership & Strategy
- Define the long-term vision, roadmap and strategy for silicon functional verification across all Graphcore silicon programs.
- Build, lead, and develop a high performing, globally distributed verification organisation.
- Establish scalable methodologies, leading edge verification techniques, and best practice processes.
- Drive automation, tooling and infrastructure evolution to improve productivity and verification quality.
- Evaluate emerging tools and technologies and drive adoption to deliver competitive advantage.
Technical Ownership
- Own verification planning, execution and sign off for all RTL blocks and top-level SoCs.
- Oversee definition of test plans including functional coverage targets. Drive close through prioritisation of test content and coverage signoff. Iterate plans to close verification gaps.
- Direct debugging strategies, triage processes and root-cause analysis workflows to enhance team productivity.
- Steer integration of verification technologies including formal methods, simulation acceleration/emulation and system level validation.
Cross Functional Collaboration
- Ensure high quality feedback to other functions within the Silicon Team.
- Partner with Architecture to influence and refine specifications for verifiability and risk reduction.
- Collaborate with Logical Design to align on design intent, architectural corner cases and test scenarios.
- Work closely with Physical Design and DFT teams to ensure coherent verification of interfaces, timing assumptions and test structures.
- Lead post-silicon debug alignment where needed, ensuring learning cycles feed back into RTL and verification methodology.
Execution & Delivery
- Deliver verification sign off on schedule across multiple parallel projects.
- Guide program risk management, resource planning, milestone creation, and verification budgeting.
- Drive consistent metrics-based verification management (structural and functional coverage, bug funnels, simulation performance, CI health, etc.).
- Provide scheduled reports into program management on progress with associated metrics based collaterol.
Essential Skills
- Demonstrated ability to lead, scale and inspire high performing verification teams.
- Extensive verification leadership experience within CPU, GPU, ASIC or SoC environments.
- Deep understanding of modern verification methodologies, flows, and infrastructure.
- Strong capability in SystemVerilog, Python, C++ and Linux-based workflows.
- Expertise in diagnosing complex logic issues across RTL, testbench and system level domains.
- Strong communication, collaboration and stakeholder management skills across global sites.
Desirable Skills
- UVM and advanced SystemVerilog Assertions (SVA).
- Experience with assembly languages and compiler toolchains (LLVM, GCC).
- Knowledge of DVCS tools (e.g., Git).
- Familiarity with distributed compute systems (SGE or other DRMS).
- Experience with XML, XPath/XSLT.
- Web technologies such as HTML/DOM, JavaScript, SQL.
- Exposure to emulation, FPGA prototyping, or formal verification tools.
Benefits
In addition to a competitive salary, Graphcore offers flexible working, a generous annual leave policy, private medical insurance and health cash plan, a dental plan, pension (matched up to 5%), life assurance and income protection. We have a generous parental leave policy and an employee assistance programme (which includes health, mental wellbeing, and bereavement support). We offer a range of healthy food and snacks at our central Bristol office and have our own barista bar! We welcome people of different backgrounds and experiences; we’re committed to building an inclusive work environment that makes Graphcore a great home for everyone. We offer an equal opportunity process and understand that there are visible and invisible differences in all of us. We can provide a flexible approach to interview and encourage you to chat to us if you require any reasonable adjustments.
Ready to apply?
Apply to Graphcore
About Graphcore
Graphcore is one of the world’s leading innovators in Artificial Intelligence compute.
It is developing hardware, software and systems infrastructure that will unlock the next generation of AI breakthroughs and power the widespread adoption of AI solutions across every industry.
As part of the SoftBank Group, Graphcore is a member of an elite family of companies responsible for some of the world’s most transformative technologies. Together, they share a bold vision: to enable Artificial Super Intelligence and ensure its benefits are accessible to everyone.
Graphcore’s teams are drawn from diverse backgrounds and bring a broad range of skills and perspectives. A melting pot of AI research specialists, silicon designers, software engineers and systems architects, Graphcore enjoys a culture of continuous learning and constant innovation.
The Role:
We are looking to hire Post-Silicon Validation Engineers to join our collaborative, cross-functional development team validating cutting edge, high performance AI chips and platforms. You will play a critical role in supporting new product introductions and post-silicon validation. Working within the Post-Silicon Validation team, you will be involved with bringing first silicon to life, functionally validating it and working closely with many other teams to help it become a fully characterised and working product, reporting project status/progress to program management on a regular basis. You will have the opportunity to, and be responsible for, leading, mentoring, and providing technical guidance to other engineering team members. In this role, you can leverage your experience and industry knowledge to architect and drive implementation of continuous improvements to test infrastructure and processes.
The Post-Silicon Validation team sits within the Architecture and Validation team, we are responsible for validation of new silicon when it returns from manufacture, enabling and supporting the production SW and FW teams to bring up their software and also supporting the Silicon Characterisation team.
Responsibilities and Duties
- Plan, design, develop and debug silicon validation tests in bare metal C/C++ on FPGA/Emulator prior to first silicon
- Deploy silicon validation tests on first silicon and debugging them
- Develop automated test framework and regression test suites in Python to optimize validation efficiency
- Collaborate closely with engineers from many other disciplines on a variety of topics
- Work with Validation and Production Test engineering peers to implement best practices and continuous improvements to test methodologies
- Analyse test results, identify and debug failures/defects
- Contribute to shared test and validation infrastructure
- Provide feedback to architects
Essential skills:
- Strong experience in Bare metal / embedded C/C++
- Good knowledge of digital ASICs
- Be highly motivated, a self starter, and a team player
- Ability to work across teams and programming languages to find root causes of deep and complex issues
- Experience of the post-silicon validation process applied in digital ASIC environments
- Python, Linux
- Excellent communication skills and the ability to collaborate with others to solve problems
- Excellent problem-solving, analytical & diagnostic skills
Desirable skills:
- Driver level experience with one or more of the following is highly desirable:
- PCIe
- Ethernet
- Memory technologies (LPDDR, DDR, HBM, …)
- Other peripherals such as I2C, I3C, SPI, …
- Good knowledge of mixed-signal building blocks such as PLLs, high speed PHYs and IC control/communication protocols is highly desirable
- Experience of Arm CPUs, System IP and debug tools
- Experience of AMBA protocols
- Understanding of ML applications and their workloads
- Experience in Characterization, Failure Analysis, Test Development, Statistical analysis, and Customer Support
Benefits:
In addition to a competitive salary, Graphcore offers flexible working, a generous annual leave policy, private medical insurance and health cash plan, a dental plan, pension (matched up to 5%), life assurance and income protection. We have a generous parental leave policy and an employee assistance programme (which includes health, mental wellbeing, and bereavement support). We offer a range of healthy food and snacks at our central Bristol office and have our own barista bar! We welcome people of different backgrounds and experiences; we’re committed to building an inclusive work environment that makes Graphcore a great home for everyone. We offer an equal opportunity process and understand that there are visible and invisible differences in all of us. We can provide a flexible approach to interview and encourage you to chat to us if you require any reasonable adjustments.
Ready to apply?
Apply to Graphcore
About Graphcore
At Graphcore, we’re building the future of AI compute.
We’re a team of semiconductor, software and AI experts, with deep experience in creating the complete AI compute stack - from silicon and software to infrastructure at datacenter scale.
As part of the SoftBank Group, backed by significant long-term investment, we are delivering key technology into the fast-growing SoftBank AI ecosystem.
To meet the vast and exciting AI opportunity, Graphcore is expanding its teams around the world.
We are bringing together the brightest minds to solve the toughest problems, in a place where everyone has the opportunity to make an impact on the company, our products and the future of artificial intelligence
Job Summary
Applicants for this role should have strong experience designing, developing, and maintaining high-quality software systems. The role focuses on testing and validating a complex machine learning software stack, with particular emphasis on software architecture, automation, and engineering best practices.
The ideal candidate is an experienced software engineer who values code quality, testability, and long-term maintainability, and enjoys building systems that other engineers rely on. This person will be comfortable working across large codebases, contributing to CI/CD infrastructure, and shaping technical direction through thoughtful design and mentoring in a technically demanding environment spanning ML frameworks, infrastructure, and AI accelerator hardware
The Team
The ML QA team is composed of highly skilled software engineers with a strong focus on automation, software quality, and data-driven validation. The team works closely with industry-standard machine learning frameworks and models, contributing to upstream open-source projects and collaborating across the wider software organization.
Operating in a fast-paced environment, the team plays a critical role in ensuring reliability, performance, and maintainability across the ML software stack, helping to deliver robust and high-quality products to customers.
Responsibilities and Duties
- Design, implement, and maintain robust test infrastructure and automation for a complex ML software stack.
- Architect and evolve test frameworks and tooling with a focus on scalability, maintainability, and developer experience.
- Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines targeting simulators, emulators (e.g. QEMU), and physical hardware.
- Create representative ML workloads and gain insights from their execution. (Numerical accuracy, performance analysis and benchmarking).
- Work closely with all Software development teams, supporting a culture of quality, security and maintainability.
- Review code and designs, setting a high bar for software engineering best practices.
- Mentor and support junior engineers, helping raise the overall technical capability of the team.
- Evaluate existing test strategies and infrastructure, identifying gaps and driving improvements aligned with team and organizational goals.
Candidate Profile
Essential:
- Experience in production-quality software engineering roles.
- Strong software design and architecture skills, with experience working on large or complex systems.
- Strong proficiency in Python, including experience building and maintaining production codebases.
- Solid experience with CI/CD systems and automated testing (preferably GitHub-based workflows).
- Experience working in Linux environments.
- Familiarity with C or C++, with the ability to read, debug, and reason about low-level code when needed.
- Proven ability to mentor junior engineers and influence engineering practices within a team.
- Strong problem-solving skills and a proactive, self-directed approach to work.
- Bachelor/Master's/PhD or equivalent experience in Computer Science, Maths, Machine Learning, Data Science, or related field.
Desirable
- Exposure to machine learning frameworks such as PyTorch, JAX, Triton, TensorFlow
- Experience with distributed workload management systems such as Kubernetes, VLLM, Keras or MLOps pipelines
- Experience working with hardware simulators or emulators (e.g. QEMU).
- Experience developing for or working with FPGA-based systems.
- Experience with people management or mentoring
Benefits
In addition to a competitive salary, Graphcore offers flexible working, a generous annual leave policy, private medical insurance and health cash plan, a dental plan, pension (matched up to 5%), life assurance and income protection. We have a generous parental leave policy and an employee assistance programme (which includes health, mental wellbeing, and bereavement support). We offer a range of healthy food and snacks at our central Bristol office and have our own barista bar! We welcome people of different backgrounds and experiences; we’re committed to building an inclusive work environment that makes Graphcore a great home for everyone. We offer an equal opportunity process and understand that there are visible and invisible differences in all of us. We can provide a flexible approach to interview and encourage you to chat to us if you require any reasonable adjustments.
Applicants for this position must hold the right to work in the UK. Unfortunately at this time, we are unable to provide visa sponsorship or support for visa applications
Ready to apply?
Apply to Graphcore
About Graphcore
At Graphcore, we’re building the future of AI compute.
We’re a team of semiconductor, software and AI experts, with deep experience in creating the complete AI compute stack - from silicon and software to infrastructure at datacenter scale.
As part of the SoftBank Group, backed by significant long-term investment, we are delivering key technology into the fast-growing SoftBank AI ecosystem.
To meet the vast and exciting AI opportunity, Graphcore is expanding its teams around the world.
We are bringing together the brightest minds to solve the toughest problems, in a place where everyone has the opportunity to make an impact on the company, our products and the future of artificial intelligence
Job Summary
Applicants for this role should have strong experience designing, developing, and maintaining high-quality software systems. The role focuses on testing and validating a complex machine learning software stack, with particular emphasis on software architecture, automation, and engineering best practices.
The ideal candidate is an experienced software engineer who values code quality, testability, and long-term maintainability, and enjoys building systems that other engineers rely on. This person will be comfortable working across large codebases, contributing to CI/CD infrastructure, and shaping technical direction through thoughtful design and mentoring in a technically demanding environment spanning ML frameworks, infrastructure, and AI accelerator hardware
The Team
The ML QA team is composed of highly skilled software engineers with a strong focus on automation, software quality, and data-driven validation. The team works closely with industry-standard machine learning frameworks and models, contributing to upstream open-source projects and collaborating across the wider software organization.
Operating in a fast-paced environment, the team plays a critical role in ensuring reliability, performance, and maintainability across the ML software stack, helping to deliver robust and high-quality products to customers.
Responsibilities and Duties
- Design, implement, and maintain robust test infrastructure and automation for a complex ML software stack.
- Architect and evolve test frameworks and tooling with a focus on scalability, maintainability, and developer experience.
- Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines targeting simulators, emulators (e.g. QEMU), and physical hardware.
- Create representative ML workloads and gain insights from their execution. (Numerical accuracy, performance analysis and benchmarking).
- Work closely with all Software development teams, supporting a culture of quality, security and maintainability.
- Review code and designs, setting a high bar for software engineering best practices.
- Mentor and support junior engineers, helping raise the overall technical capability of the team.
- Evaluate existing test strategies and infrastructure, identifying gaps and driving improvements aligned with team and organizational goals.
Candidate Profile
Essential:
- Experience in production-quality software engineering roles.
- Strong software design and architecture skills, with experience working on large or complex systems.
- Strong proficiency in Python, including experience building and maintaining production codebases.
- Solid experience with CI/CD systems and automated testing (preferably GitHub-based workflows).
- Experience working in Linux environments.
- Familiarity with C or C++, with the ability to read, debug, and reason about low-level code when needed.
- Proven ability to mentor junior engineers and influence engineering practices within a team.
- Strong problem-solving skills and a proactive, self-directed approach to work.
- Bachelor/Master's/PhD or equivalent experience in Computer Science, Maths, Machine Learning, Data Science, or related field.
Desirable
- Exposure to machine learning frameworks such as PyTorch, JAX, Triton, TensorFlow
- Experience with distributed workload management systems such as Kubernetes, VLLM, Keras or MLOps pipelines
- Experience working with hardware simulators or emulators (e.g. QEMU).
- Experience developing for or working with FPGA-based systems.
- Experience with people management or mentoring
Benefits
In addition to a competitive salary, Graphcore offers flexible working, a generous annual leave policy, private medical insurance and health cash plan, a dental plan, pension (matched up to 5%), life assurance and income protection. We have a generous parental leave policy and an employee assistance programme (which includes health, mental wellbeing, and bereavement support). We offer a range of healthy food and snacks at our central Bristol office and have our own barista bar! We welcome people of different backgrounds and experiences; we’re committed to building an inclusive work environment that makes Graphcore a great home for everyone. We offer an equal opportunity process and understand that there are visible and invisible differences in all of us. We can provide a flexible approach to interview and encourage you to chat to us if you require any reasonable adjustments.
Applicants for this position must hold the right to work in the UK. Unfortunately at this time, we are unable to provide visa sponsorship or support for visa applications
Ready to apply?
Apply to Graphcore