Staff/ Senior Staff NPI Debug Engineer

About Altera
At Altera™, our independence as the world’s largest pure-play FPGA solutions provider gives us the focus, speed, and agility to innovate without compromise. With more than four decades of industry-leading FPGA expertise, our singular mission is to deliver the programmable technologies that help customers differentiate, innovate, and scale across rapidly evolving markets like AI, cloud, networking, and edge. As an independent company, we move faster, invest deeper, and partner more closely—empowering our teams to drive breakthrough innovation and shape the future of the FPGA industry.

About The Role
Altera is seeking a Staff / Senior Staff NPI (New Product Introduction) Debug Engineer to serve as a key senior technical leader for our most critical hardware investigations. In this high-impact role, you will take point on complex NPI escalations, leading cross-functional debug taskforces to resolve gating silicon issues across silicon, design, and test domains. You will share taskforce leadership responsibilities with other senior members of the team, acting as the primary orchestrator for investigations that heavily involve analog, mixed-signal, and power delivery challenges.

This is a highly technical senior individual contributor role requiring a unique blend of deep hardware debug expertise, yield analysis proficiency, and strong crisis-management skills. You will analyze complex issues firsthand, define fault trees, guide parallel investigations across global engineering teams, and present root-cause findings to executive leadership.
Why Altera
•    Serve as a senior technical leader orchestrating taskforces for cutting-edge FPGA programs.
•    Act as the go-to expert for complex analog, power, and mixed-signal escalations.
•    Orchestrate problem-solving across world-class design, validation, product, test, and manufacturing teams.
•    Gain high executive visibility by driving recovery plans for Altera’s most complex hardware blockers.
•    Mentor engineers and establish the blueprint for structured debug and root-cause analysis.
 

Key Responsibilities:

Taskforce Leadership & Critical Issue Resolution

•    Drive Debug Taskforces: Act as the technical lead and orchestrator for designated cross-functional "tiger teams" formed to solve critical NPI blockers, especially those involving complex analog, power, or signal integrity interactions.
•    Define the Debug Strategy: Develop comprehensive fault trees, design of experiments (DOEs), and parallel investigation paths. Assign clear ownership across Design, Product, Test, Validation, and Manufacturing teams.
•    Synthesize Complex Data: Aggregate and analyze findings from simulation/circuit analysis, ATE test data, failure analysis (FA) and yield signatures to rapidly close in on root cause.
•    Executive Communication: Lead taskforce syncs, maintain clear dashboards, and present high-level readouts, recovery schedules, and risk assessments to leadership.

Yield Analysis & Manufacturing Excellence
•    Lead complex yield analysis activities directly related to NPI investigations, including yield pareto, parametric shift analysis, tester correlation, and statistical data review.
•    Identify systemic yield detractors and lead corrective actions across the foundry/fab, assembly, test, and design teams.
•    Influence test program development, diagnostic coverage, and outlier detection screening to prevent taskforce-level escapes.
•    Track yield by lot, wafer, and unit to proactively catch issues before they escalate.

Deep Hardware Debug 
•  Knowledge of advanced lab equipment, fault isolation and failure analysis tools to identify the best methodologies for debug and interpet the failure analysis data to direct the debug.
•  Guide experimental builds and validation of engineering fixes proposed by the taskforces.

Salary Range

The pay range below is for Bay Area California only. Actual salary may vary based on a number of factors including job location, job-related knowledge, skills, experiences, trainings, etc. We also offer incentive opportunities that reward employees based on individual and company performance. 

$149,100 - $215,000 USD

We use artificial intelligence to screen, assess, or select applicants for the position. Applicants must be eligible for any required U.S. export authorizations.

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Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Physics, or related technical field. Master’s or PhD preferred.

• 6+ years of experience in hardware debug, NPI engineering, product/yield engineering, or system validation 

• 6+ years leading technical taskforces to resolve critical silicon, hardware, or yield issues under tight schedules.

• 6+ years of experience driving yield analysis and yield improvement for semiconductor, FPGA, SoC, or complex hardware products.

• 6+ years of data analysis experience using Python, JMP, or equivalent

Preferred Qualifications

• Master’s or PhD in Electrical Engineering, Electronics, Physics, or related field.

• Strong background in analog and mixed-signal debug

• Familiarity with fault isolation (FI) and failure analysis (FA) techniques

• Exceptional technical communication skills; capable of translating highly technical, multi-disciplinary debug data into clear risk assessments and action plans for leadership.