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. Reporting to senior leadership within Architecture and Validation, the role helps coordinate priorities, improve execution visibility and support delivery of key engineering milestones across multiple validation teams. The position partners with validation leadership and program management, architecture, silicon, firmware, software and systems engineering teams to improve operational efficiency and help scale validation processes, infrastructure and team effectiveness across global sites. It operates across validation disciplines supporting silicon and platform bring-up, validation, characterization and system readiness throughout the product lifecycle. The role may require travel of up to 25% to support collaboration across engineering locations and program activities.

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 managing 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 organizations.
Understanding of SoC architectures, high-speed interfaces, memory systems and system integration challenges.
Experience supporting engineering leadership or operational execution within technical organizations.
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 organizations.

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.