ASIC Validation Engineer

About the Role

Proto is accelerating the world's transition to an open economy with products that increase access and independence for everyone. We are looking for an ASIC Validation Engineer to work on Bitkey and our mining initiatives.

• Bring up new silicon on bench platforms, evaluation boards, and system hardware
• Debug issues across ASIC, board, firmware, and system interactions
• Develop bench tests, scripts, and tools to exercise silicon features and collect data
• Build and maintain test setups (lab automation, instrumentation, fixtures, scripts)
• Partner with ASIC designers to validate functionality and root‑cause failures
• Work with system engineers to ensure silicon performs correctly in target system environments, including mining systems
• Generate and analyze data to support design decisions, characterization, and bring‑up
• Create lightweight, reusable test workflows and documentation for the broader team
• Support early manufacturing efforts with practical validation and debug, as needed
• Travel up to 20% to the labs in Oakland, CA or Toronto, Canada

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering or related field
• 4+ years of experience in silicon validation, hardware test, or related roles
• Strong hands‑on experience in a lab environment (bench bring‑up, debugging, instrumentation)
• Solid understanding of digital systems and basic analog concepts
• Experience writing scripts or tools (Python preferred) for test and data analysis
• Comfortable debugging issues that span multiple layers (ASIC board system)
• Clear communication skills and ability to work closely with cross‑functional teams

• Experience with ASIC or FPGA bring‑up and validation
• Familiarity with common interfaces (SPI, I2C, JTAG, UART, etc.)
• Experience using lab equipment (oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, power supplies, etc.)
• Exposure to high‑performance, power‑dense systems (e.g., mining ASICs, accelerators, or similar)
• Experience building test automation or internal tooling
• Familiarity with data analysis and visualization
• Nice to have: experience working with early silicon / first bring‑up environments
• Exposure to manufacturing test or ATE
• Experience working on systems with tight power, thermal, and performance constraints

This role enables the team to move fast. By building the right test infrastructure and quickly turning hardware behavior into actionable data, you’ll help both ASIC and system teams iterate faster and make better decisions across silicon and mining system development.

Proto is an equal opportunity employer evaluating all employees and job applicants without regard to identity or any legally protected class. We will consider qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records in accordance with state and local laws and “fair chance” ordinances. We are committed to an inclusive interview experience, including providing reasonable accommodations to disabled applicants throughout the recruitment process.