Principal Physical Design CAD Engineer

The role

The engineer will develop, maintain, and improve CAD flows and methodologies for physical design teams. This includes supporting implementation stages from synthesis through signoff readiness using industry-standard EDA tools.

What you will do

• Develop and support physical design CAD flows using industry-standard EDA tools
• Build automation infrastructure for implementation, analysis, reporting, and debug
• Support design teams in synthesis, floorplanning, placement, CTS, routing, timing, power, and physical verification
• Create scripts and utilities to improve productivity, quality of results, and flow robustness
• Support and enhance flows based on Synopsys Fusion Compiler
• Explore and integrate GenAI solutions to accelerate debug and automate tasks
• Analyze tool results, logs, QoR metrics, timing reports, congestion, utilization, power, and design-rule issues

Required qualifications

• At least 3 years of experience in Physical Design, CAD, or implementation methodology
• Strong understanding of digital physical design concepts, including synthesis, placement, CTS, routing, timing closure, and physical verification
• Hands-on experience with Synopsys Fusion Compiler
• Experience with scripting languages such as Tcl, Python
• Ability to develop automation around EDA tools and large-scale design flows
• Good understanding of timing, power, congestion, floorplanning, and QoR analysis
• Strong debugging and problem-solving skills
• Ability to work closely with multiple engineering teams and support complex design environments
• High motivation to learn and apply GenAI technologies in semiconductor design flows

Nice to have

• Experience with additional tools such as PrimeTime, StarRC, ICC2, Innovus, Voltus, RedHawk, Calibre, or similar
• Knowledge of STA, low-power design, UPF, EM/IR, extraction, or signoff flows
• Experience building dashboards, regression systems, flow checkers, or automated report analyzers
• Familiarity with LLMs, prompt engineering, AI agents, or GenAI-based coding/debug tools
• Experience with Git, CI/CD, databases, or cloud-based compute environments

About the company

Astera Labs provides rack-scale AI infrastructure through purpose-built connectivity solutions. The company integrates semiconductor-based technologies with the COSMOS software suite to deliver connectivity.