Member of Technical Staff, Hardware, Physical Design Engineer (AI)

Location: Austin, Texas or Palo Alto, California, United States

Salary: $200,000–$420,000 USD annually

Company

Develops personal AI products spanning local-inference hardware, bespoke training infrastructure, user interfaces, and deep learning research.

What you will do

• Own the physical implementation flow from RTL synthesis through placement, clock tree synthesis, routing, and tape-out for high-performance hardware blocks.
• Optimize layout topology, cell density, utilization, and power delivery networks to maximize performance, power, and area on advanced process nodes.
• Close timing and electrical constraints by performing static timing analysis and resolving setup, hold, signal integrity, electromigration, and IR-drop issues.
• Run and debug sign-off physical verification, including DRC, LVS, and antenna-rule checks.
• Collaborate with RTL and architecture teams on logic structures, pipeline depth, routing congestion, and implementation closure.
• Develop and integrate AI-driven EDA tools and workflow automation for physical design closure.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering or Computer Engineering.
• 5+ years of industry experience with advanced process nodes of 7nm or below.
• Hands-on experience with physical design, timing, and sign-off tools such as Innovus, Fusion Compiler, PrimeTime, and RedHawk.
• Experience with logic synthesis, compiled memory macros, and multi-voltage design using UPF or CPF.
• Strong debugging skills and the ability to balance congestion, timing slack, and power density in highly utilized designs.
• Collaborative experience working with RTL and architecture teams.

Nice to have

• Production tape-outs of high-performance SoCs, CPUs, GPUs, or AI accelerators.
• Physical-layout optimization for systolic arrays, tensor execution units, or HBM interfaces.
• EDA-tool scripting or extension with Tcl, Python, or specialized ML APIs.

Culture & Benefits

• Visa sponsorship is available for the right candidate.
• Relocation support is available as needed.
• Health, dental, and vision benefits.
• Unlimited paid time off.
• Work alongside scientists, engineers, and builders from leading technology companies and AI labs.