Doctoral Thesis - AI in Digital Functional Verification (f/m/div)

#WeAreIn to create tiny chips and big careers. Curiosity drives progress. Will you drive it with us? As a PhD student at Infineon, you’ll collaborate with passionate minds, shape innovations that power tomorrow’s world, and build a career where your expertise truly makes a difference. Are you in?

Your Role

As part of an industrial doctorate at Infineon, you will pursue a doctoral degree at a university while gaining professional experience at the same time - an ideal way to start your career. You will advance your research with us and benefit from our broad network of doctoral candidates as well as the expertise of a university. Mentorship is provided by both university professors and dedicated Infineon employees. The research will be carried out in cooperation with the Technical University of Munich under the supervision of Prof. Dr.-Ing. Ulf Schlichtmann. By 2030, a significant shortage of skilled design and verification engineers is expected. This shortage is further intensified by the increasing complexity of system-on-chips (SoCs), especially those based on RISC‑V, which are rapidly gaining adoption due to their open‑source nature and flexibility. As complexity rises, verification effort grows proportionally and can account for up to 60% of overall product development time. To reduce time‑to‑market while maintaining high quality and reliability, innovative solutions are needed to streamline verification processes. Artificial intelligence (AI), particularly generative AI (GenAI), has recently emerged as a promising driver of productivity improvements. In both academia and industry, developments such as agentic AI workflows have demonstrated the potential of AI to automate and enhance engineering processes. In the field of digital functional verification, AI has the potential to transform areas such as assertion generation, testbench generation, coverage closure, and bug detection. The scope of this doctoral thesis is to develop an AI‑based methodology aimed at increasing the productivity of verification engineers, specifically in pre‑silicon verification tasks. These include formal verification, Universal Verification Methodology (UVM), and related techniques. By integrating AI‑driven approaches into these workflows, the research aims to reduce verification effort, improve process efficiency, and help address the skills gap in this domain.

Key responsibilities in your new role

• Literature research: On existing solutions and state-of-the‑art AI‑based techniques
• Focus on the future: Development of an AI‑based methodology for digital functional verification
• Holistic overview: Automation of the AI‑based workflow for company‑wide adoption
• Expand your horizons: Application of the methodology on digital designs such as RISC‑V processors
• Data is everything: Documentation and analysis of obtained results

What you will gain

• Deep expertise in design verification
• Strong practical skills in applying AI to engineering problems

Qualifications And Skills To Help You Succeed

• Education: You are eligible for full‑time PhD studies and hold a master’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, or a similar field with excellent results
• Experience: In the field of digital design and verification methodologies
• Mandatory skills: Strong analytical and problem‑solving skills, as well as excellent programming skills (preferably in Python and C++) with knowledge in AI/ML techniques
• Preferable skills:
  • Experience with commercial EDA tools for formal verification and simulation
  • Experience with AI/ML applications in design verification or a similar field
  • Familiarity with scripting languages such as Bash and Perl
  • Motivation: You are enthusiastic about innovation, research, and scientific writing
  • Way of working: You question the status quo and like to break new ground
  • Language skills: Good written and spoken skills in English; German would be a plus

Contact

Rahel Tews

#WeAreIn for driving decarbonization and digitalization. As a global leader in semiconductor solutions in power systems and IoT, Infineon enables game‑changing solutions for green and efficient energy, clean and safe mobility, as well as smart and secure IoT. Together, we drive innovation and customer success, while caring for our people and empowering them to reach ambitious goals. Be a part of making life easier, safer and greener.

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