Physical Design Engineer

Job Description

About Etched

Etched is building hardware for frontier intelligence. We co-design chips, racks, software, and manufacturing to deliver best-in-class throughput and latency across both prefill and decode workloads. Our first products are heavily focused on inference. Backed by hundreds of millions from top-tier investors and staffed by leading engineers, Etched is redefining the infrastructure layer for the fastest growing industry in history.

Job Summary

Etched is looking for exceptional Physical Design engineers to join our team. In this role, you

will own block-level implementation and verification, drive timing closure and PPA optimization, supervise 3rd party design work, and help improve our design flows and iteration speed.

Key Responsibilities

Deeply understand what is involved in physical design

Running PD flows to close blocks, support ASIC infrastructure, automate PD flows,

improve CAD infrastructure

Collaborate with RTL Designers and provide Physical Design feedback to improve PPA

Drive dashboards that show the convergence of projects related to PD

Optimize tool flows, working with EDA vendors to incorporate the latest features

Accountable for block level closure

Supervise the outsourcing of physical design to a 3rd party service

You may be a good fit if you have

5-10+ years of previous experience with PD

Tools, flow, and design methodology from RTL synthesis to GDSII sign-off

Experience with back-end design and timing closure on advanced process nodes (5nm

and below)

Experience with Cadence (Innovus, Genus) or Synopsys (ICC2, Fusion Compiler)

automated RTL-to-GDSII flows

Experience with sign-off tools (PrimeTime, Tempus, Voltus, etc.)

Experience with UPF-based low power design methodology, power verification,synthesis, scan insertion/ATPG, formal verification, floorplanning, placement, CTS,

routing, IR drop, and EM/antenna analysis

Deeply creative and able to think from first principles

Strong candidates may also have experience with

Familiarity with modern ML and LLM model architectures

Ability to program with Python or another scripting language

Familiarity with AI tools for programming/coding

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 $2k 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 + dinner in our office

Unlimited compute budget subject to ROI justification

How we’re different:

Etched believes in the Bitter Lesson. We are the first inference-focused frontier AI system, betting early on transformer and transformer-like architectures and on increasing model sizes. Our addressable market is the entirety of inference, unlike many of our competitors.

We are a fully in-person team in San Jose (Santana Row), and greatly value engineering skills. We do not have boundaries between engineering and research, and we expect all of our technical staff to contribute to both and work across disciplines as needed.

Compensation Range: $150K - $275K

Full-time