Director of Physical Design

Key Responsbilities

• Lead and manage a team of physical design engineers, providing technical direction, mentorship, and performance feedback.
• Define and execute the physical design strategy for multiple projects, ensuring alignment with company goals and timelines.
• Develop, optimize, and maintain ASIC design flows for synthesis, PnR, EM/IR analysis, STA, and PV.
• Drive continuous improvements in flow efficiency, automation, and quality metrics to meet power, performance, and area (PPA) targets.
• Own the complete ASIC physical design process, from RTL handoff to GDSII delivery.
• Collaborate with front-end design teams on RTL readiness and design-for-test (DFT) requirements.
• Oversee logic synthesis, ensuring adherence to timing, power, and area constraints.
• Drive floor planning, placement, clock tree synthesis (CTS), routing, and physical optimization in PnR.
• Manage EM/IR analysis, timing closure through STA, and physical verification, including DRC, LVS, and metal fill.
• Ensure successful tapeout with full sign-off criteria met, including reliability and manufacturability requirements.
• Work closely with cross-functional teams, including front-end design, DFT, package engineering, and manufacturing.
• Present project updates and status reports to executive leadership.

Minimum Qualifications

• Expertise in multiple areas of physical design, timing, and signoff
• Strong scripting and automation skills
• Management of small team experience
• Bachelor’s or master’s degree in electrical engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field

Ideal Qualifications

• 12+ years of experience in ASIC physical design, with a proven track record of leading teams through successful tapeouts
• Deep expertise in the following areas: o RTL-to-GDSII flows o Synthesis, PnR, STA, EM/IR, and PV o Physical design for advanced process node (5nm and below) across two or more foundries
• Strong knowledge of EDA tools (Synopsys or Cadence) and scripting (Python, Perl).
• Exceptional leadership, project management, and problem-solving skills.