Hsio Validation Lead – Silicon Co-design

NVIDIA NVIDIA · Semiconductors · Santa Clara, CA

NVIDIA is seeking a Validation Lead for High-Speed I/O (HSIO) interfaces, focusing on post-silicon bring-up, characterization, validation, and debug of interfaces like PCIe, NVLink, and C2C across GPUs, CPUs, and SoCs. The role involves owning the full stack debug, defining validation strategy, and crucially, owning and building AI agents for automated debug triage, data pipelines, and analysis to reduce cycle time and identify issues. The candidate will also ensure robust interoperability and translate learnings into methodology improvements. This role requires deep protocol and signal integrity expertise, hands-on lab experience, and the ability to debug across hardware, firmware, and software. Experience building or deploying AI-driven flows for HSIO debug is a significant plus.

What you'd actually do

  1. Own post-silicon bring-up, characterization, validation, and debug of PCIe, NVLink, C2C, and other HSIO interfaces across NVIDIA GPUs, CPUs, and SoCs from first power-on through production readiness.
  2. Close the hardest failures. Drive root cause across protocol behavior, signal integrity, firmware and driver interactions, platform topology, and silicon marginalities and own every fix through to confirmation.
  3. Define validation strategy. Set test coverage, debug priorities, margining methodology, and stress criteria for each program. Your strategy is what stands between a silicon risk and a customer escape.
  4. Own and build AI agents that operate under your direction. These include automated debug triage, intelligent data pipelines, and analysis flows. They reduce cycle time and identify issues before production. Know where AI accelerates real work and where it introduces risk.
  5. Ensure robust interoperability across the full ecosystem: retimers, switches, accelerators, CPUs, GPUs, and sophisticated multi-device system topologies.

Skills

Required

  • BS or MS in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or Systems Engineering, or equivalent experience in the lab.
  • 8+ years in silicon validation, HSIO bring-up, or high-speed interface debug on real hardware.
  • Deep protocol expertise in PCIe, NVLink, CXL, C2C, Ethernet, USB, or similar high-speed interface technologies.
  • Strong signal integrity fundamentals: SERDES behavior, link training, equalization, clocking, reset, power management, and high-speed board and system interactions.
  • Hands-on lab depth: oscilloscopes, BERTs, protocol analyzers, logic analyzers, exercisers, and silicon debug tools.
  • The ability to debug across the full stack, hardware, firmware, drivers, and platform design, without losing the thread.
  • Enough statistical proficiency to recognize the moments a marginal distribution is telling you something and enough develop intuition to know where to look next!

Nice to have

  • Recognized depth in PCIe, NVLink, CXL, or advanced SERDES validation, with failures that other teams brought to you.
  • You've built or deployed AI-driven flows for HSIO debug or failure triage, and can speak to both the outcome and the guardrails.
  • Track record of solving customer-critical or production-blocking HSIO failures under schedule pressure and driving them all the way through.
  • Experience setting technical direction across a validation organization or developing engineers into recognized subsystem experts.

What the JD emphasized

  • Own the full stack
  • own every fix through to confirmation
  • Your methodology shapes
  • Your decisions affect yield, production ramp, and field quality
  • The engineers who do it well hold protocol depth and system breadth simultaneously, never lose the thread across hardware, firmware, and software, and have the judgment to know when to go deeper and when to act.
  • You will own the full stack.
  • You then confirm that the fix works.
  • Your methodology shapes how NVIDIA validates high-speed interfaces across generations.
  • Your decisions affect yield, production ramp, and field quality.
  • The engineers who do it well hold protocol depth and system breadth simultaneously, never lose the thread across hardware, firmware, and software, and have the judgment to know when to go deeper and when to act.
  • They are rare.
  • Should that describe you, read on.
  • Close the hardest failures.
  • Drive root cause across protocol behavior, signal integrity, firmware and driver interactions, platform topology, and silicon marginalities and own every fix through to confirmation.
  • Define validation strategy.
  • Set test coverage, debug priorities, margining methodology, and stress criteria for each program.
  • Your strategy is what stands between a silicon risk and a customer escape.
  • Own and build AI agents that operate under your direction.
  • These include automated debug triage, intelligent data pipelines, and analysis flows.
  • They reduce cycle time and identify issues before production.
  • Know where AI accelerates real work and where it introduces risk.
  • Ensure robust interoperability across the full ecosystem: retimers, switches, accelerators, CPUs, GPUs, and sophisticated multi-device system topologies.
  • Sit at the decision table.
  • Your analysis drives alignment across architecture, logic design, circuit design, firmware, drivers, ATE, DGX, and product teams.
  • Your data is what settles calls.
  • Translate what you learn on real silicon into methodology and coverage improvements that make future products harder to escape.
  • 8+ years in silicon validation, HSIO bring-up, or high-speed interface debug on real hardware.
  • Deep protocol expertise in PCIe, NVLink, CXL, C2C, Ethernet, USB, or similar high-speed interface technologies.
  • Strong signal integrity fundamentals: SERDES behavior, link training, equalization, clocking, reset, power management, and high-speed board and system interactions.
  • Hands-on lab depth: oscilloscopes, BERTs, protocol analyzers, logic analyzers, exercisers, and silicon debug tools.
  • The ability to debug across the full stack, hardware, firmware, drivers, and platform design, without losing the thread.
  • Enough statistical proficiency to recognize the moments a marginal distribution is telling you something and enough develop intuition to know where to look next!
  • Recognized depth in PCIe, NVLink, CXL, or advanced SERDES validation, with failures that other teams brought to you.
  • You've built or deployed AI-driven flows for HSIO debug or failure triage, and can speak to both the outcome and the guardrails.
  • Track record of solving customer-critical or production-blocking HSIO failures under schedule pressure and driving them all the way through.
  • Experience setting technical direction across a validation organization or developing engineers into recognized subsystem experts.
  • The interfaces you validate move data between the chips that run the world's AI infrastructure.
  • When they work, nobody notices.
  • When they don't, everything stops.
  • If that is the kind of problem you want to own, we want to hear from you.

Other signals

  • AI agents for automated debug triage
  • AI for intelligent data pipelines and analysis flows
  • Own and build AI agents