Prior to joining Synopsys 1994, Joachim was a managing director of CADIS GmbH, a company he had co-founded in 1989 in Aachen, Germany and was acquired by Synopsys 1994. From 1984 to 1989 Joachim was a research assistant at the Aachen University of Technology, Aachen, Germany, where he conducted research in the area of system-level simulation techniques for digital signal processing.

Joachim Kunkel received a ‘Dipl.-Ing. der Nachrichtentechnik’ degree from the Aachen University of Technology in 1984.