Physical Design Engineer - Flow & Methodologies

The role

You will architect the physical design flow from first principles to accelerate time-to-market and PPA gains. This role involves building automated RTL-to-GDSII flows and managing CAD infrastructure for AI hardware.

What you will do

• Architect, build, and maintain automated RTL-to-GDSII flow
• Automate PD flows including regression, run management, and version control
• Build and own CAD infrastructure including tool qualification and deployment
• Drive dashboards for PD project convergence including timing and physical verification
• Optimize tool flows and work with EDA vendors
• Define reference flows, QoR targets, and delivery checklists for 3rd party services
• Partner with block and top-level owners to debug flow issues
• Create block level and full chip level PG mesh from scratch
• Create and maintain a DRC-clean floorplanning flow
• Drive PPA tuning to optimize tool settings

Required qualifications

• 5-10+ years of previous experience with PD or PD methodology/CAD
• Experience building and owning automated RTL-to-GDSII flows used by multiple block owners
• Experience creating block level and full chip level PG mesh from scratch
• Experience with DRC-clean floorplanning flows and automated checks
• Experience with Cadence (Innovus, Genus) or Synopsys (Fusion Compiler) automated RTL-to-GDSII flows
• Experience with PPA tuning and timing correlation
• Experience integrating sign-off tools (PrimeTime, Tempus, Voltus, Pegasus, Calibre) into production flows
• Experience with back-end design on advanced process nodes (5nm and below)
• Experience with UPF-based low power design methodology and multi-mode multi-corner setup
• Strong Tcl and Python skills

Nice to have

• Familiarity with modern ML and LLM model architectures
• Familiarity with AI tools for programming/coding
• Experience with compute farm and job scheduler optimization for EDA workloads
• Startup experience or comfort working in fast-paced environments

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision packages with generous premium coverage
• $500 per month credit for waiving medical benefits
• Housing subsidy of $2.5k per month for those living within walking distance of the office
• Relocation support for those moving to San Jose (Santana Row)
• Various wellness benefits covering fitness, mental health, and more
• Daily lunch and dinner in our office
• Unlimited compute budget subject to ROI justification

About the company

Etched is building hardware for frontier intelligence, co-designing chips, racks, software, and manufacturing. They are a fully in-person team in San Jose (Santana Row).