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.
Responsibilities and Duties
We are seeking a highly skilled System Tests & Diagnostics Engineer to develop, extend, and integrate specialized silicon validation and diagnostics tools for next-generation AI SoCs.
Unlike traditional validation roles focused on executing test plans, this position is responsible for developing the diagnostic software and stress tools that expose hardware failures, characterize silicon behavior, and improve platform observability throughout bring-up and validation.
You will work closely with Arm engineers to understand and extend existing diagnostics technologies while developing Graphcore-specific capabilities for future AI hardware.
Role Summary
You will work with existing Arm-developed diagnostics technologies and extend them to support Graphcore's next-generation AI silicon.
You will be responsible for developing system-level diagnostics and stress tools that integrate with an existing framework to detect data integrity, computational correctness, performance, and reliability issues across CPUs, AI accelerators, memory, storage, PCIe, firmware, BMC, and other platform components. Examples include silent data corruption (SDC) tests, power transient stress tools, and platform diagnostics, with opportunities to develop new diagnostics as future hardware capabilities evolve.
This role requires close collaboration with hardware architects, firmware engineers, validation engineers, and diagnostics teams to understand new hardware capabilities and translate them into reusable diagnostic software.
Responsibilities
- Learn and extend existing Arm diagnostics tools to support Graphcore’s AI platform.
- Develop specialized diagnostics and stress-testing software for CPU, memory, interconnect, PCIe, and other system components.
- Build reusable validation utilities that integrate into the existing validation framework.
- Develop tools that expose intermittent hardware failures including silent data corruption, timing-related issues, and hardware instability.
- Design configurable diagnostic applications supporting multiple silicon revisions, platforms, and execution environments.
- Develop automation for executing diagnostics across server and rack-scale validation environments.
- Design configuration-driven diagnostics supporting scalable parameterization and workload variation.
- Collaborate with hardware architects to understand new hardware capabilities and identify missing diagnostics.
- Work closely with firmware and validation teams to improve hardware observability.
- Debug low-level hardware, firmware, operating system, and driver interactions.
- Analyze diagnostic output and improve fault isolation methodologies.
- Develop software that enables engineers to reproduce and investigate difficult hardware failures.
- Contribute reusable libraries and utilities that improve engineering productivity across multiple validation teams.
- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
- 12+ years of experience developing hardware diagnostics, system validation software, firmware validation tools, or low-level systems software.
- Strong software development skills in Python and C/C++.
- Strong Linux systems experience.
- Strong understanding of modern server platform architecture, including how CPU, memory, PCIe, storage, networking, firmware, operating system, and device drivers interact within a complete system.
- Experience debugging hardware/software interactions across multiple layers of the platform.
- Experience developing diagnostics, stress testing, or hardware validation software.
- Experience with server platforms, embedded systems, or SoC validation.
- Strong analytical and debugging skills.
- Experience collaborating across hardware, firmware, software, and validation teams.
- Excellent communication and problem-solving skills.
Preferred Qualifications
- Arm-based server platforms
- AI accelerators or high-performance computing systems
- Silent Data Corruption (SDC) testing
- Hardware stress testing
- Power transient analysis
- Hardware fault injection methodologies
- Firmware validation
- Silicon bring-up
- Performance characterization
- Hardware telemetry and observability
- BMC firmware or server management
- RAS (Reliability, Availability, Serviceability) technologies
- Validate across subsystems:
- CPU scaling and cache behavior
- Memory (DDR/HBM) bandwidth, latency, and NUMA effects
- Interconnect contention under multi-core load
- PCIe/I-O throughput, latency, and multi-device scenarios
- High-speed I/O validation
What Success Looks Like
Successful candidates will:
- Extend existing diagnostics technologies to support new Graphcore hardware.
- Develop new diagnostics tools for emerging hardware capabilities.
- Build reusable software components that integrate seamlessly with the existing validation framework.
- Improve hardware observability and root-cause isolation.
- Detect and characterize intermittent hardware failures that traditional validation techniques cannot expose.
- Deliver configurable diagnostics that scale across multiple platforms and silicon revisions.
- Work effectively across hardware, firmware, validation, and diagnostics teams to continuously improve platform quality.
Why Join Graphcore?
This role provides a unique opportunity to work at the intersection of hardware architecture, diagnostics, and software engineering while helping define how next-generation AI systems are validated.
Rather than maintaining an existing validation framework, you will develop the specialized diagnostics and stress tools that make that framework valuable. Your work will directly influence hardware quality, silicon bring-up, and long-term platform reliability for future AI infrastructure.
USA Benefits
In addition to a competitive salary, Graphcore offers flexible working and a comprehensive benefits package designed to support your health, wellbeing and financial future. Our benefits include medical, dental and vision coverage, Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs), Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), disability and life insurance, a 401(k) retirement plan, commuter benefits, wellness services and an Employee Assistance Programme (EAP). 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.
Skills Required
- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical discipline
- 12+ years of experience developing hardware diagnostics, system validation software, firmware validation tools, or low-level systems software
- Strong software development skills in Python and C/C++
- Strong Linux systems experience
- Strong understanding of modern server platform architecture, including CPU, memory, PCIe, storage, networking, firmware, operating systems, and device drivers
- Experience debugging hardware and software interactions across multiple platform layers
- Experience developing diagnostics, stress-testing, or hardware validation software
- Experience with server platforms, embedded systems, or SoC validation
- Strong analytical and debugging skills
- Experience collaborating across hardware, firmware, software, and validation teams
- Excellent communication and problem-solving skills
- Experience with Arm-based server platforms
- Experience with AI accelerators or high-performance computing systems
- Experience with Silent Data Corruption testing
- Experience with hardware stress testing and power transient analysis
- Experience with hardware fault injection methodologies
- Experience with firmware validation and silicon bring-up
- Experience with performance characterization and hardware telemetry or observability
- Experience with BMC firmware or server management
- Experience with Reliability, Availability, and Serviceability technologies
- Experience validating CPU scaling, cache behavior, memory bandwidth and latency, NUMA effects, interconnect contention, PCIe and I/O performance, and high-speed I/O
What the Team is Saying
Graphcore Compensation & Benefits Highlights
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Healthcare Strength — Medical coverage starts day one in the U.S. with dental/vision and mental‑health support, and private medical insurance with wellbeing resources is highlighted in other regions. These offerings indicate robust core health protection.
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Retirement Support — Retirement programs feature a U.S. 401(k) with a 100% company match up to 6% (with a true‑up) and matched pension schemes up to 5% in the UK (and 4% in Poland). This breadth signals meaningful employer support for long‑term savings.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — Flexible working hours, trust‑based or “unlimited annual leave” in some regions, and U.S. flexible PTO with 11 paid holidays are emphasized. These provisions point to wide‑ranging time‑off options.
Graphcore Insights
What We Do
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.
Why Work With Us
Our team is at the forefront of the machine intelligence revolution, enabling innovators from all industries to build AI-native products to expand human potential. What we do at Graphcore really makes a difference.
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Graphcore Offices
Hybrid Workspace
Employees engage in a combination of remote and on-site work.
At Graphcore, we value wellbeing and flexibility to support a healthy work/life balance. Our hybrid approach encourages office-based colleagues to work onsite three days a week, with trusted flexibility built on trust and transparency for everyone.
