Job Description
Renesas is looking for a Sr. Principal Engineer, Validation. to redefine how automotivegrade silicon quality is builtdriving firsttimeright silicon, eliminating customer escapes, and setting a new industry benchmark for validation excellence
Key Responsibilities
- Define and own the endtoend silicon validation strategy for automotive and HPC SoCs, from presilicon enablement through postsilicon production release.
- Ensure firsttimeright silicon, robust validation coverage, and zero customer escapes across all assigned programs.
- Lead global validation teams responsible for silicon bringup, characterization, and systemlevel validation across multiple concurrent programs.
- Establish and drive a System Use Case Validation Program, harvesting real customer/OEM and system scenarios and converting them into automated, traceable validation suites.
- Influence SoC architecture, design, and program decisions through early validation insights, risk identification, and databacked recommendations.
- Drive shiftleft validation as a measurable engineering program, increasing reuse across simulation, emulation/FPGA, and silicon to reduce late surprises.
- Own escapeprevention strategy, including robustness testing, fault scenarios, coverage models, and disciplined validation signoff criteria.
- Build and scale highperforming validation organizations, developing strong technical leadership (Staff/Principal pipeline) and execution ownership.
- Lead automation, standardization, and infrastructure modernization across validation labs, board farms, and CI systems.
- Establish validation methodologies, quality benchmarks, metrics, and dashboards aligned with Renesas standards and automotive expectations.
- Identify technical, execution, and program risks early; drive datadriven mitigation and executive decisionmaking.
- Provide clear executivelevel reporting on validation status, risks, readiness, and outcomes.
- Act as a trusted partner to Design, DV, Test, Firmware, Software, Product Engineering, Quality, and BU leadership.
- Adoption of industry best practices as a measurable program
Qualifications
Required Skills & Experience
- B.E./B. Tech or M.E./M. Tech in Electronics, Electrical, or Computer Engineering, or equivalent industry experience.
- 18+ years of experience in semiconductor validation, characterization, or silicon engineering, with demonstrated ownership of silicon quality outcomes.
- 3+ years in senior technical leadership roles
- Strong domain expertise in automotive SoC validation, systemlevel usecase testing, and robustness validation.
- Proven experience delivering complex SoC programs from first silicon through production release.
- Deep understanding of silicon validation flows, lab environments, and postsilicon debug ecosystems.
- Demonstrated success building and scaling automationfirst validation frameworks using Python, C++, or similar technologies.
- Strong experience driving crossfunctional execution in a matrixed, global environment.
- Excellent executive communication, stakeholder management, and decisionmaking skills.
- Experience with AI frameworks for SoC Validation efficiency and quality gain eg validation specific AI agents, Cody AI for content development etc.
Preferred
- Experience with ISO 26262 / ASILD development and validation environments.
- Exposure to emulation/FPGAbased shiftleft validation and prepost silicon continuity models.
- Strong foundation in mixedsignal and digital silicon validation, including patternbased and systemlevel methodologies.
- Track record of institutionalizing industry best practices across multiple programs and organizations.
- Experience leading culture change toward proactive risk ownership, evidencebased closure, and challengeready execution.
- Automotive OEM or Tier1 customer engagement experience.
