Validation Chief of Staff

Graphcore•Austin, TX

About The Position

The Validation Chief of Staff supports strategic execution, operational coordination, and cross-functional alignment across Graphcore’s Architecture and Validation organisation. The role drives organisational effectiveness across validation teams by coordinating priorities, improving execution visibility, and supporting delivery of key engineering milestones. It combines technical understanding of silicon validation and bring-up environments with strong organisational, communication, and stakeholder management skills. The position partners with validation leadership, program management, architecture, silicon, firmware, software, and systems engineering teams to improve operational efficiency, manage critical initiatives, and help scale validation processes, infrastructure, and team effectiveness across global sites. It operates across multiple validation disciplines and teams, supporting coordination, communication, and operational execution across geographically distributed engineering organisations. Travel of up to 25% may be required to support collaboration across engineering locations and program activities. The Architecture and Validation organisation is responsible for bring-up, validation, characterization, and system readiness of Graphcore silicon and platforms throughout the product lifecycle, from pre-silicon readiness and first silicon bring-up through subsystem validation, system integration, and production readiness.

Requirements

Strong experience working within silicon validation, post-silicon bring-up, system validation, or related engineering environments.
Strong understanding of hardware and software development lifecycles for complex SoC or platform products.
Experience coordinating cross-functional engineering activities across multiple technical disciplines.
Excellent organisational, planning, and operational coordination skills.
Strong analytical and problem-solving capabilities, including the ability to manage complex technical and organisational dependencies.
Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills across multidisciplinary engineering organisations.
Experience creating structured reporting, tracking, and operational review mechanisms.
Ability to work effectively across geographically distributed teams and stakeholders.
Strong attention to detail and ability to manage multiple priorities simultaneously.
Experience using collaboration, reporting, and project tracking tools within engineering environments.
Ability to operate independently in fast-moving and technically complex environments.
Strong Linux and Python familiarity within engineering workflows and validation environments.

Nice To Haves

Experience within post-silicon validation, debug, or characterization organisations.
Understanding of SoC architectures, high-speed interfaces, memory systems, and system integration challenges.
Experience supporting engineering leadership or operational execution within technical organisations.
Familiarity with validation infrastructure, regression systems, and engineering workflows.
Experience with silicon bring-up and product readiness processes.
Knowledge of AI accelerator, GPU, or high-performance compute systems.
Experience analyzing engineering execution metrics and operational data.
Familiarity with agile planning, milestone tracking, and engineering program coordination.
Experience working across globally distributed engineering organisations.

Responsibilities

Partner with validation leadership to coordinate execution across multiple validation and bring-up initiatives.
Drive organisational planning, prioritisation, and operational tracking across validation programs and milestones.
Improve visibility of project status, technical risks, dependencies, and execution readiness across teams.
Coordinate cross-functional activities between validation, architecture, silicon, firmware, software, and systems engineering teams.
Support leadership reviews, engineering readiness assessments, and validation status reporting.
Help define and improve operational processes, engineering workflows, and communication structures across the validation organisation.
Track key validation metrics, milestones, and deliverables to support organisational execution and decision-making.
Support escalation management and coordination of complex technical issues across teams.
Drive continuous improvement initiatives related to validation infrastructure, engineering processes, and operational efficiency.
Organise and coordinate technical reviews, planning discussions, and cross-site engineering meetings.
Contribute to development of scalable documentation, reporting frameworks, and operational tooling.
Work with engineering leadership to identify resource constraints, prioritisation conflicts, and execution risks.
Facilitate collaboration across geographically distributed engineering teams and stakeholders.
Support onboarding and organisational scaling activities across the validation organisation.
Provide structured analysis and recommendations to leadership to support strategic and operational decision-making.