Principal Product Applications Engineer, Custom Silicon
$185,000–$210,000 year
On-siteSan Jose, California, United States
Job Summary
Serve as the primary technical interface for strategic customer programs, developing trusted relationships with customer engineering teams from architecture discussions through production deployment. Lead complex debug efforts involving hardware, firmware, software, and system-level integration while translating requirements into actionable engineering inputs. Collaborate with Product Management, Architecture, ASIC Design, Firmware, Validation, and Software Engineering to drive customer success and influence future silicon development. Support design reviews, technical training, and executive engagements, creating documentation and diagnostic tools in Python or C/C++ to improve efficiency. Travel to customer sites as needed to support key design wins.
Required Qualifications
- BS or MS in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical discipline
- 10+ years of experience in Product Applications Engineering, Systems Engineering, Customer Engineering, Field Applications Engineering, or a related customer-facing semiconductor role
- Experience supporting advanced semiconductor or custom silicon products from architecture through production
- Strong understanding of high-speed interconnect technologies, including Ethernet (through 800G), PCIe, PAM4, SerDes, DSPs, DAC, AEC, ACC, AOC, and related hardware technologies
- Experience with silicon bring-up, post-silicon validation, and system-level debugging
- Strong Linux debugging and troubleshooting experience
- Experience writing Python or C/C++ scripts for automation, diagnostics, firmware validation, or lab workflows
- Proven experience working directly with hyperscalers, cloud providers, enterprise customers, or major OEMs
- Excellent communication, presentation, and technical leadership skills
Desired Qualifications
- Experience supporting AI infrastructure platforms or high-performance computing systems
- Familiarity with custom ASIC development and customer-specific silicon solutions
- Experience with firmware, embedded software, or FPGA validation
- Understanding of networking, storage, memory, or accelerator architectures
- Experience creating customer-facing technical documentation, training materials, and application notes
- Experience supporting executive customer reviews and technical design discussions
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