Validation Chief of Staff

About 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.

Graphcore’s teams are drawn from diverse backgrounds and bring a broad range of skills and perspectives. A melting pot of AI research specialists, silicon designers, software engineers and systems architects, Graphcore enjoys a culture of continuous learning and constant innovation.

Job Summary

Reporting to senior leadership within Architecture and Validation, the Validation Chief of Staff will support strategic execution, operational coordination and cross-functional alignment across the validation organisation.

This role is responsible for driving organisational effectiveness across multiple validation teams, helping coordinate priorities, improve execution visibility and support delivery of key engineering milestones. The position requires strong technical understanding of silicon validation and bring-up environments combined with exceptional organisational, communication and stakeholder management skills.

The Validation Chief of Staff will partner closely 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. This role may require travel of up to 25% to support collaboration across engineering locations and program activities.

The Team

The Architecture and Validation organisation is responsible for bring-up, validation, characterization and system readiness of Graphcore silicon and platforms.

The organisation works across the full product lifecycle, supporting pre-silicon readiness, first silicon bring-up, subsystem validation, system integration and production readiness activities. Teams collaborate closely with architecture, hardware, firmware, software and systems engineering groups to deliver high-quality AI compute products.

The Validation Chief of Staff role operates across multiple validation disciplines and teams, helping coordinate activities, improve communication flows and support operational execution across geographically distributed engineering organisations.

Responsibilities and Duties

• 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

Essential:

• 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 with 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 with the 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

Desirable

• 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

USA Benefits

In addition to a competitive salary, Graphcore offers flexible working and a comprehensive benefits package designed to support your health, wellbeing and financial future. Our benefits include medical, dental and vision coverage, Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs), Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), disability and life insurance, a 401(k) retirement plan, commuter benefits, wellness services and an Employee Assistance Programme (EAP). We welcome people of different backgrounds and experiences; we're committed to building an inclusive work environment that makes Graphcore a great home for everyone. We offer an equal opportunity process and understand that there are visible and invisible differences in all of us. We can provide a flexible approach to interview and encourage you to chat to us if you require any reasonable adjustments.