When the first chips return from the factory, a different group of engineers takes over: post-silicon validation engineers bring the chips up and prove they work, product and test engineers make sure every chip shipped is good and that enough of them are, and application engineers help customers use them. These roles work with real hardware and test equipment rather than only simulations. This article describes each, based on job postings from 2025 and 2026, and how they connect to the design teams.
7 min read | Beginner
What You'll Learn
- Describe the work of post-silicon validation, product and test engineers
- List the tools and skills postings ask for in these roles
- Explain how these roles work with design and verification teams
- Choose tutorials that prepare for silicon roles
Post-Silicon Validation Engineers
Post-silicon validation engineers bring up the first chips and test them across voltage, temperature and workloads, as the Post-Silicon Validation tutorial describes. Postings describe triaging and debugging failures on silicon, working with architecture, design and verification teams to define validation strategies, reproducing silicon failures on emulators and FPGAs with the verification team, and proposing debug features for future chips to the design team[1][2]. Validation is usually done by a dedicated team, though in smaller companies pre-silicon verification engineers often take part[3].
Validation engineers combine knowledge of the chip's architecture with hands-on lab work on test boards and scripting to automate tests. Some roles focus on firmware and software bring-up, writing the low-level code that exercises the chip[2].
Product and Test Engineers
Product engineers take a chip from first silicon to high-volume production. Postings describe developing characterization and qualification plans and the manufacturing test flow; running characterization on wafer-level and package-level test equipment and on the bench across process, voltage and temperature; correlating test equipment with bench measurements and setting production test limits; and improving yield and test time during new product introduction and production, using statistical methods[4][5][6]. Test engineers write and debug the programs that run on automatic test equipment (ATE); postings often ask for experience with the main ATE platforms and with programming them[7].
Postings usually ask for a degree in electrical engineering or physics, an understanding of device physics and test methods, and data analysis skills, with experience from entry level to eight or more years for staff roles[4][6].
Quick Check
Q: What is characterization, according to product engineering postings?
Show Answer
Measuring how the chip behaves across process, voltage and temperature on test equipment and bench setups, to understand its margins and to set the limits used in production testing.
Application Engineers
Field application engineers (FAEs) and application engineers are the technical link between a chip company and its customers. Postings describe them as the bridge between customers, sales and internal engineering; helping customers choose and design in components; supporting customers through to production, or for foundries through to tape-out; and, at equipment companies, installing and supporting systems and training users[8][9][10]. They typically ask for an engineering degree and three to six years of experience[8][10]. Application engineers help win the design wins described in From Concept to Customer: How Chips Become Products.
Where Is This Used?
Silicon and test roles exist wherever chips are made and sold: at chip companies' own labs, at foundries and packaging and test companies, at test-equipment makers, and at test and product-engineering service companies. Product engineering roles also appear at companies that build test equipment, where engineers develop the instruments other companies use to test their chips[5][7].
How These Roles Connect to Design
Most RTL and verification engineers are not involved in bring-up day to day; they are called in when validation finds a failure that may trace back to their block. Validation postings describe this collaboration directly, with silicon teams reproducing failures together with verification teams and feeding debug requirements back to design[2]. Product engineers similarly feed test results back to design and DFT teams, which is why Design for Test is useful background for them.
How the Roles Grow
A new validation or product engineer usually starts by running defined tests and analyzing results under a senior engineer, then owns the validation of a feature or the test program of a product, and later leads bring-up or production readiness for a whole chip.
Preparing for These Roles
- Post-Silicon Validation for bring-up and debug;
- SoC Design and Computer Architecture to understand the chips being tested;
- Design for Test at SoC Level for production test concepts;
- Bus Protocols for the interfaces used on test boards.
Quick Check
Q: Why do validation teams work with the verification team when they find a silicon failure?
Show Answer
Silicon offers limited visibility into the chip. Reproducing the failure on an emulator or FPGA with the verification team makes every signal visible, so the cause can be found and fixed, and the tests can be improved for the next chip.
Summary
- Post-silicon validation engineers bring up first silicon, test it across conditions and debug failures with design and verification.
- Product engineers characterize chips, set production test limits and improve yield; test engineers program the test equipment.
- Application engineers connect customers with the chip company and help win and support designs.
- These roles work with real hardware, test equipment and data analysis.
- Designers and verification engineers are brought in when silicon failures trace back to their blocks.
Sources
- Post-silicon validation and methodology engineer, Nvidia posting.
- CPU post-silicon validation engineer, Nuvia posting; Principal post-silicon validation engineer (bring-up), Graphcore posting.
- Post-silicon validation, ChipVerify.
- Staff product engineer, Lattice Semiconductor.
- Product engineer, Elevate Semiconductor.
- Staff product development engineer, silicon test and yield, AMD posting via Hitmarker; Senior staff NPI product engineer, Semtech posting.
- ATE test engineer, Teradyne.
- Senior field application engineer, JAC Recruitment.
- Field application engineer, GlobalFoundries posting.
- Field application engineer, Teradyne.
