Technical Lead, Research Engineer, AI for Chip Design

Google DeepMind; City Of London; On-site; GBP 80,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading AI research firm seeks a Technical Lead, Research Engineer to drive AI for Chip Design initiatives. You will leverage advanced machine learning technologies to tackle complex challenges affecting the chip design industry. The ideal candidate will have a Ph.D. in Computer Science or related field, along with extensive experience in Deep Learning frameworks like PyTorch and TensorFlow. This role involves leading a dynamic team and collaborating closely with hardware engineers to ensure groundbreaking innovations in AI.

Benefits

Diversity and inclusion initiatives

Collaborative work environment

Qualifications

• Ph.D. or M.S./B.S. with 5+ years in a relevant field.
• Strong hands-on Deep Learning implementation skills.
• Experience with ML infrastructure and distributed systems.

Responsibilities

• Manage a thriving and growing team.
• Drive infrastructure development for AI in Chip Design.
• Contribute to ML for Physical Design and Logical Synthesis.

Skills

Deep Learning implementation

Machine Learning infrastructure

Coding and tools integration

Education

Ph.D. in Computer Science or related field

B.S./M.S. in Computer Science or related field with 5+ years of experience

Tools

PyTorch

TensorFlow

JAX

Job description

Technical Lead, Research Engineer, AI for Chip Design

London, UK

Snapshot

Artificial Intelligence could be one of humanity’s most useful inventions. At Google DeepMind, we’re a team of scientists, engineers, machine learning experts and more, working together to advance the state of the art in artificial intelligence. We use our technologies for widespread public benefit and scientific discovery, and collaborate with others on critical challenges, ensuring safety and ethics are the highest priority.

About Us

We develop and apply state-of-the-art AI methods and models to accelerate Chip Design and work closely with research and product teams across Google.

Our team is composed of research scientists, research engineers and software engineers that have already had a big impact on real products via research breakthroughs. We work on lighting the path of new ideas that can become new products. We work closely with hardware engineers, architects so we can bring novel ideas to real products.

We have recently participated and won the IWLS 2023 Programming Contest by applying Deep Learning, Simulated Annealing and Reinforcement Learning to logic synthesis, with multiple landings on the recent TPUs. AlphaChip has been adopted in the last 5 generations of TPUs.

Gemini has been adopted by the HW team in multiple workstreams accelerating the Chip Design process.

The mission of our team is to “Accelerate and Optimize Chip Design with AI.” At Google DeepMind we've built a unique culture and work environment where long-term ambitious research grounded in real problems can flourish.

The Role

As part of our team at Google DeepMind you'll have opportunities to advance AI for Chip Design to enable breakthrough capabilities, and pioneer next‑generation products in collaboration with major Product Areas.

There are many fundamental research and transformative product landing opportunities, including but not limited to:

• Bring the most advanced ML models and technologies to Chip Design.
• Develop ML breakthroughs that will have a big impact for Google and for the whole Chip design industry.
• Use LLMs and transformer models to accelerate chip design.
• Solve some of the most complex tasks in Chip Design (RTL generation, RTL verification, Logic Synthesis, Physical Design, PPA prediction, …).

Key responsibilities:

• Manage a thriving and growing team.
• Drive the development of infrastructure for AI for Chip Design.
• Develop agentic flows, tool use and new capabilities for Chip Design.
• Contribute to ML for Physical Design, Logical Synthesis, Verification and RTL generation.
• Work closely with other REs and collaborators to deliver AI solutions to chips.
• Amplify impact by generalising solutions into reusable libraries for many use cases.

About You

In order to set you up for success as a Research Engineer at Google DeepMind, we look for the following skills and experience:

• Ph.D. in Computer Science or related quantitative field, or B.S./M.S. in Computer Science or related quantitative field with 5+ years of relevant experience.
• Strong coding and ML infrastructure, distributed systems, tools integrations.
• Strong hands‑on implementation experience with Deep Learning (DL) models and frameworks like PyTorch, JAX, TensorFlow, or similar. Publicly available evidence of DL implementation skills via open source repositories will be valuable.

In addition, the following would be an advantage:

• Experience or interest in Chip & Hardware Design, especially on automating Chip Design including EDA.
• Self‑directed research engineer who can land new research ideas in productionisation in a rapidly shifting landscape. Excel at leading high performing teams and cross‑team collaborations.
• Knowledge of Machine Learning, Differentiable Programming, Discrete Optimization, Reinforcement Learning, Chip & Hardware Design or related fields.

At Google DeepMind, we value diversity of experience, knowledge, backgrounds and perspectives and harness these qualities to create extraordinary impact. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of sex, race, religion or belief, ethnic or national origin, disability, age, citizenship, marital, domestic or civil partnership status, sexual orientation, gender identity, pregnancy, or related condition (including breastfeeding) or any other basis as protected by applicable law. If you have a disability or additional need that requires accommodation, please do not hesitate to let us know.