The posting, in Graphcore's own words
archived Oct 21, 2026About us
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 Principal 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.
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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.
Essential
Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical discipline. Strong 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.
Desirable:
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