Design Verification Architect

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Job Title: Formal Verification Architect, PCIe & UALink Controllers

Role Summary

We are looking for an experienced Formal Verification Architect to lead the formal verification strategy for high-performance PCIe and UALink controller IP.

The ideal candidate will combine deep formal verification expertise with strong protocol and microarchitecture knowledge. This is a hands-on technical leadership role responsible for defining verification architecture, identifying high-value formal targets, solving complex proof problems, and driving formal methods throughout the IP development lifecycle.

Key Responsibilities

• Define the formal verification architecture and methodology for PCIe and UALink controller IP.
• Develop block, subsystem, and end-to-end formal verification strategies spanning:
  • Protocol engines and state machines
  • Transaction and packet processing
  • Flow control and credit management
  • Ordering and dependency rules
  • Replay, retry, recovery, and error handling
  • Arbitration, scheduling, and resource management
  • Power/reset and initialization sequences
  • Configuration and control logic
• Identify areas where formal verification can provide stronger coverage than simulation, especially for corner cases, deadlocks, livelocks, starvation, ordering violations, data integrity, and protocol compliance.
• Architect assume-guarantee, compositional, abstraction, and formal decomposition strategies for large and complex controller designs.
• Develop reusable SystemVerilog Assertions (SVA), properties, checkers, constraints, and formal verification IP.
• Drive convergence of difficult proofs through abstraction, cut-points, state-space reduction, invariants, partitioning, and proof-debug techniques.
• Work closely with RTL architects and designers to improve design-for-formal-verification and resolve architectural ambiguities early.
• Define formal coverage criteria and establish metrics for proof completeness, unreachable states, vacuity, assumptions, and coverage closure.
• Lead formal analysis of complex bug classes that are difficult to expose through constrained-random simulation.
• Establish the appropriate balance between formal, simulation, emulation, and system-level verification.
• Review verification plans and architecture specifications to identify formal opportunities and verification gaps.
• Mentor verification engineers and raise formal verification capability across the broader controller verification organization.

Required Qualifications

• BS/MS/PhD in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field.
• Typically 15+ years of Verification experience, with significant hands-on formal verification experience of 5 years at least.
• Deep expertise in property-based formal verification of complex RTL.
• Deep knowledge of PCI Express, preferably PCIe 5.0/6.0/7.0 controller architecture and verification.
• Experience with UALink, CXL, UCIe, Ethernet, or comparable high-performance interconnect protocols
• Strong knowledge of:
  • SystemVerilog and SVA
  • Formal property development
  • Assumption and constraint modeling
  • Abstraction and decomposition
  • Formal coverage and proof closure
  • Counterexample analysis and debug
• Hands-on experience with industry formal platforms such as Cadence Jasper or Equivalent
• Experience applying formal verification to high-speed interconnect or networking controller designs.

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