Senior/Principal Physical Design Engineer (AI)

Location: London - JJ Mack or Bristol - The Crescent, United Kingdom

Company

hirify.global is a semiconductor startup founded in 2022 that develops chips and systems for high-speed inference of frontier AI models.

What you will do

• Drive end-to-end physical implementation of complex ASIC and SoC designs, including floorplanning, placement, clock tree synthesis, routing, and sign-off, with potential full-chip ownership.
• Perform synthesis, static timing analysis, timing closure, and PPA optimisation.
• Develop power plans and analyse IR drop, electromigration, signal integrity, and low-power architectures.
• Ensure DRC, LVS, formal verification, and other physical verification requirements are met.
• Collaborate with RTL, architecture, verification, DFT, process technology, foundry, and engineering teams on constraints, manufacturability, yield, and physical-aware RTL.
• Develop EDA flows and use advanced AI tools and models to improve engineering productivity, analysis, and design quality.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s, Master’s, or PhD in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field.
• 8+ years of physical design experience for advanced technology nodes, such as 7nm, 5nm, or below.
• Strong proficiency with EDA tools for place and route, static timing analysis, and sign-off, including tools such as Cadence Innovus, Synopsys Fusion Compiler, and Mentor Graphics Calibre.
• Solid understanding of CMOS technology, semiconductor physics, and process limitations.
• Experience with low-power design methodologies, power optimisation, and multi-power-domain architectures.
• Expertise in timing closure, signal integrity, IR drop analysis, and formal verification.
• Proficiency in scripting languages such as TCL, Perl, or Python for automation.
• Excellent problem-solving, communication, and teamwork skills in a collaborative design environment.
• Experience in high-performance computing, AI accelerators, or networking chips.

Nice to have

• Experience or strong interest in leveraging advanced AI tools and models within the engineering workflow.

Culture & Benefits

• Competitive salary reflecting experience and the specialist nature of the role.
• Meaningful equity and ownership participation.
• Private medical, dental, and vision coverage.
• Contributory pension, 25 days of holiday plus bank holidays, and life or critical illness insurance.
• Diverse and inclusive office environment with a commitment to equal employment opportunity.
• Work involves technologies subject to UK, US, and other international export control regulations; certain roles may require additional eligibility checks.