Robert

About Me

Robert describes life as a formal verification engineer as “part philosophy, part engineering, part detective work.” He joined Axiomise after a mathematics background and found a home in the intersection of logic, problem-solving, and hardware design.

What initially drew you from the world of Maths into the field of Formal Verification?

In the final years of my degree, I spent a lot of time thinking about what I wanted to do after university. Much of my final-year work focused on understanding how proof and logic can be applied to solve a huge range of problems, and I knew I wanted to continue solving problems in a mathematically rigorous way.

When I came across Axiomise at a careers fair, I was immediately interested by the need for formal proof in silicon verification and wanted to learn more.

What habit from your Maths degree has proved most useful?

One of the most valuable habits I developed during my degree was carefully thinking through the consequences of every assumption or requirement. In both mathematics and formal verification, precise definitions are critical. They can determine the solution to a problem—or whether a bug is found at all

I expected this skill to be important when reading research papers and evaluating conclusions, but I was surprised by how useful it became when reading design specifications and constructing formal checks. The experience I gained during my degree helped me learn formal verification more quickly and contribute effectively from an early stage.

What surprised you most about applying abstract mathematical thinking to hardware correctness?

I have been impressed by just how rigorous hardware verification can be. Before joining Axiomise, I assumed that formal mathematical analysis would be limited by the practical realities of hardware engineering.

Instead, I discovered that formal verification is built on deep and well-established logical foundations. What I enjoy most is how it combines the logical reasoning that interests me with detailed knowledge of hardware design to produce reliable and provable results.

How does a day in the life of an Axiomiser look? How do you find the collaboration with engineers and researchers?

What happens during a day at Axiomise varies a lot depending on the state of the current project.

A typical morning might begin by checking whether verification runs completed overnight and reviewing any newly flagged failures. From there, the task is to investigate the issue, determine whether it represents a genuine design error, and work with colleagues to identify the root cause.

Once we work out the cause, the next step could be a meeting with the customer to raise the issue and try to find a fix, or returning to tweak the tests to find a different case.

Alongside project work, I may also collaborate with Axiomise’s R&D team, experimenting with new techniques to find bugs and prove correctness in increasingly complex designs.

Working with different teams is always exciting as it often means we are thinking about a tricky problem and there are always many different clever ideas and potential solutions to get stuck into.

After eight months at Axiomise, does FV feel most like philosophy, engineering, or detective work in disguise?

Honestly, it’s a combination of all three.

There’s an aspect of detective work when you’re trying to uncover why a particular behaviour is occurring and looking for the root cause. There’s engineering involved in designing accurate verification checks and ensuring specifications are met. I would say there is even a bit of philosophy involved when trying to understand the proof construction methods and develop the best ways to utilise their advantages to be able to create new techniques.