Director - Silicon Product Engineering

About Us

Axelera AI is not your regular deep‑tech startup. We are creating the next-generation AI platform to support anyone who wants to help advancing humanity and improve the world around us.

In just four years, we have raised a total of 370 million and have built a world‑class team of 220+ employees (including 49+ PhDs with more than 40,000 citations), both remotely from 18 different countries and with offices in Belgium, France, Switzerland, Italy, the UK, headquartered at the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven, Netherlands.

We have also launched our Metis AI Platform, which achieves a 3‑5x increase in efficiency and performance, and have visibility into a strong business pipeline exceeding 100 million.

Our unwavering commitment to innovation has firmly established us as a global industry pioneer.

Are you up for the challenge?

As Director of Silicon Product Engineering, you will lead the Silicon Product Engineering and Bristol Lab functions through NPI and into volume production, with the NPI Engineering Manager and Lab Manager reporting to you. You will be the senior interface between these teams and the executive, owning departmental budgets, headcount and resourcing decisions, and the OSAT and partner choices that shape each new program.

You will report to the executive team and partner closely with Design, Engineering, Sales, and our external manufacturing ecosystem.

You will set the direction for Silicon Product Engineering and test, oversee the Bristol Lab, and build the organisational muscle to scale across multiple concurrent chip programs as the business grows. This is a director‑level management role: it calls for a leader with the technical background to make sound NPI and OSAT decisions and earn the respect of senior engineers, paired with the commercial and organisational judgement to manage budgets, resourcing, and the day‑to‑day running of two technical departments.

• Define and own the product engineering roadmap across all silicon programs, from tapeout planning through high‑volume manufacturing.
• Own ATE strategy and major NPI decisions, including build‑vs‑buy, test‑coverage trade‑offs, and OSAT selection at programme kickoff.
• Drive tapeout‑to‑production timelines, identifying risks early and coordinating resolution across design, validation, and manufacturing partners.
• Own product qualification strategy for both data centre and automotive markets, ensuring alignment with customer and regulatory standards.
• Lead NPI governance: phase gates, cross‑functional reviews, executive reporting, and programme documentation.
• Plan team structure, headcount, and capability against the company's growth pipeline, ensuring Product Engineering and Lab can support concurrent programs as the business scales.

• Own strategic relationships with OSATs, ATE vendors, foundries, and test houses, driving partner selection, commercial negotiations, and production readiness.
• Lead test program transfer and ramp with OSAT partners, including technical qualification and ongoing yield improvement.
• Collaborate with foundries on process monitoring, yield analysis, and continuous improvement across multiple technology nodes.
• Build a trusted external partner network that gives Axelera competitive advantage in speed, quality, and cost.

• Lead and evolve the Bristol validation lab into a scalable, professionally‑run engineering operation supporting multiple concurrent programs.
• Through the Lab Manager, oversee silicon bring‑up, characterisation, and production test development carried out in the lab.
• Set operational standards and own the lab budget covering equipment, calibration, procurement, safety, and stock control.
• Ensure the lab's validation capability (power, JTAG/scan, signal integrity, thermal) scales with the company's ambition.

• Build, lead, and mentor a multidisciplinary team of test engineers, validation engineers, and lab technicians.
• Recruit and develop senior talent, creating career paths that retain top performers in a competitive…