Formal Verification

About Etched

Etched is building the world’s first AI inference system purpose-built for transformers - delivering over 10x higher performance and dramatically lower cost and latency than a B200. With Etched ASICs, you can build products that would be impossible with GPUs, like real-time video generation models and extremely deep & parallel chain-of-thought reasoning agents. Backed by hundreds of millions from top-tier investors and staffed by leading engineers, Etched is redefining the infrastructure layer for the fastest growing industry in history.

Job Summary

We are seeking a Formal Verification Engineer to join our ASIC Design Verification team. You will drive formal verification across the custom IP, interface IP, and SoC subsystems that power our ASICs, including compute arrays, DMA engines, NoCs, memory systems, PCIe, Ethernet, CPU subsystems, low-power peripherals, and vendor IP wrappers. You will work closely with architects, RTL designers, DV engineers, emulation teams, and software/firmware teams to prove design correctness, expose deep corner-case bugs, and improve verification closure across the full chip.

Key Responsibilities

• Define and drive formal verification strategy across the ASIC DV team for complex IP blocks, interface subsystems, and SoC integration logic.

• Develop formal verification plans covering functional correctness, connectivity, ordering, reset behavior, configuration legality, and deadlock/livelock freedom.

• Build reusable formal environments using SystemVerilog Assertions, assumptions, constraints, checkers, cut-points, abstraction models, and reference models.

• Drive proof convergence using abstractions, cut-points, assume-guarantee reasoning, cover properties, bounded-proof analysis, and coverage metrics to establish formal sign-off confidence.

• Work with architects and RTL designers to translate design intent and specifications into high-value formal properties and closure criteria.

• Partner with UVM DV, emulation, software, and firmware teams to align formal verification with simulation, coverage, regressions, and bring-up.

• Debug complex RTL, protocol, datapath, connectivity, and integration bugs using formal counterexamples, waveforms, and design analysis.

• Contribute to formal sign-off methodology, regression automation, reporting, and design-for-formal best practices.

You May Be a Good Fit If You Have

• 5+ years of design verification experience, including significant hands-on formal verification experience on complex digital designs or shipping silicon.

• Strong proficiency with SystemVerilog, SystemVerilog Assertions, and formal verification methodology.

• Experience with commercial formal tools such as Cadence JasperGold, Synopsys VC Formal, or Siemens Questa Formal.

• Strong understanding of digital design, computer architecture, datapaths, interconnects, memory systems, and standard SoC interfaces.

• Ability to model complex design behavior using assumptions, abstractions, constraints, cut-points, checkers, and reference models.

• Strong debugging skills across RTL, specifications, formal counterexamples, simulation waveforms, and verification reports.

• Experience collaborating across architecture, RTL design, UVM DV, emulation, software, firmware, and vendor teams.

• You thrive in a fast-paced startup environment and can take ownership of ambiguous, high-impact verification problems.

Strong Candidates May Also Have Experience With

• Formal verification of systolic arrays, DMA engines, NoCs, memory subsystems, arithmetic datapaths, PCIe, Ethernet, AXI/AMBA, CPU interfaces, or low-power controllers.

• Protocol compliance checking, connectivity checking, register verification, datapath validation, reset verification, or deadlock/livelock analysis.

• Vendor IP integration, encrypted or black-box IP verification, VIP configuration, and contract-based verification around subsystem boundaries.

• Sequential LEC, floating-point or integer arithmetic proofs, cache coherency checks, interrupt handling, or memory-mapped IO verification.

• Scripting in Python, TCL, Perl, or similar for automation, regression management, debug, and dashboarding.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision packages with generous premium coverage

  • $500 per month credit for waiving medical benefits

• Housing subsidy of $2k per month for those living within walking distance of the office

• Relocation support for those moving to San Jose (Santana Row)

• Various wellness benefits covering fitness, mental health, and more

• Daily lunch + dinner in our office

How we’re different

Etched believes in the Bitter Lesson. We think most of the progress in the AI field has come from using more FLOPs to train and run models, and the best way to get more FLOPs is to build model-specific hardware. Larger and larger training runs encourage companies to consolidate around fewer model architectures, which creates a market for single-model ASICs.

We are a fully in-person team in San Jose (Santana Row), and greatly value engineering skills. We do not have boundaries between engineering and research, and we expect all of our technical staff to contribute to both as needed.