Astera Labs
Principal CAD Methodology Engineer, Physical Design
$185K–$240K
San Jose, California, United States +1 · Principal · Full-time · Posted Jul 22, 2026
- Location
- San Jose, California, United States
California - Experience
- 8+ years.
- Education
- Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field; or equivalent experience not stated. Master's preferred.
About the job
Owns and improves reusable physical design flows and automation infrastructure to support predictable, high-quality RTL-to-GDSII tapeouts.
What you'll do
- Develop and maintain end-to-end physical design flows, including synthesis, place-and-route, extraction, STA, and EMIR.
- Build automation and QoR tracking for large-scale analysis; optimize compute and job-scheduling resources.
- Set flow standards, qualify tools and foundry enablement, and support engineers through guidance and training.
What they ask for
- Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field.
- 8+ years in physical design methodology, CAD, or flow development for complex SoCs at 7nm and below.
- Experience with both Cadence and Synopsys physical design toolchains and multi-corner/multi-mode analysis infrastructure.
- Strong knowledge of synthesis, place-and-route, extraction, STA, equivalence checking, foundry design rules, and scripting in Python, Tcl, and/or Perl.
Nice to have
- Master's degree.
- Knowledge of agentic AI solutions for EDA automation, CI/CD integration, compute farm management, or advanced packaging.
Pay
$185,000 to $240,000 USD base salary
Tools
Cadence Innovus, Tempus, Voltus, Pegasus, Synopsys Fusion Compiler, ICC2, PrimeTime, StarRC
AI focus
Preferred knowledge of agentic AI solutions for EDA automation.
Model-written summary · the original posting is authoritative