Digital Design Flow Architect

NXP Semiconductors; Austin (TX); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

NXP Semiconductors in Austin, TX seeks a Digital Design Flow Architect to define a repeatable RTL-to-GDS flow and drive PPA optimization across advanced process technologies. You will lead end-to-end digital implementation, automation, and agentic AI-enabled debugging across cross-functional teams.

The role requires leadership, strong experience with EDA tools, and the ability to translate design challenges into scalable flows and measurable productivity gains.

Qualifications

• End-to-end digital implementation experience RTL-to-GDS.
• Experience with static design and timing analysis.
• Familiar with formal/static verification and PPA closure.

Responsibilities

• Architect a modular RTL-to-GDS flow supporting synthesis, place and route, timing/power closure, static verification, signoff, and GDS delivery.
• Enable agentic AI-assisted debugging, design-space exploration, and automated analysis loops for EDA workflows.
• Establish repeatable flow practices with standard recipes, configuration baselines, metrics, dashboards, audit trails, regression checks, and release management.
• Deploy flows for new process technologies in partnership with design, CAD/methodology, foundry, and EDA vendor teams.
• Improve productivity, turnaround time, quality-of-results, and PPA through automation, methodology tuning, and scalable reuse.

Skills

RTL-to-GDS

Static timing analysis

Formal verification

PPA optimization

Agentic AI workflows

Scripting automation

EDA tool ecosystems

Education

B.S. in Electrical/Computer Engineering or CS

MS or PhD preferred

Tools

Synopsys

Cadence

Siemens EDA

Job description

Role Overview

The Digital Design Flow Architect will define and deploy a repeatable, traceable, and customizable end-to-end digital design flow for advanced process technologies. The role combines RTL-to-GDS implementation expertise, static verification, PPA optimization, AI tool enablement, and hands-on agentic flow development.

Key Responsibilities

Architect a modular RTL-to-GDS flow supporting synthesis, place and route, timing/power closure, static verification, signoff, and GDS delivery.

Enable agentic execution, AI-assisted debugging, design-space exploration, and automated analysis loops for EDA workflows.

Establish repeatable and traceable flow practices, including standard recipes, configuration baselines, metrics, dashboards, audit trails, regression checks, and release management.

Deploy flows for new process technologies in partnership with design, CAD/methodology, foundry, and EDA vendor teams.

Improve productivity, turnaround time, quality-of-results, and PPA through automation, methodology tuning, and scalable reuse.

Education and Experience Level

1. Education: B.S. in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field required; M.S. or Ph.D. preferred.
2. Level: Director of Technology-level technical leader of digital design, CAD/methodology, EDA implementation, or flow architecture experience.
3. Scope: Proven ability to set technical direction, influence senior stakeholders, and lead cross-functional flow transformation across functional domains or technology nodes.

Required Experience and Skills

• Deep hands-on experience in end-to-end digital implementation, RTL-to-GDS, static design and timing analysis, formal/static verification, signoff, ECO, and PPA closure.
• Strong expertise in synthesis, floorplanning, place and route, clock-tree synthesis, power optimization, congestion analysis, and advanced-node implementation challenges.
• Hands-on agentic AI workflow development experience, including task planning, tool invocation, result interpretation, retry logic, human-in-the-loop checkpoints, and autonomous execution patterns.
• Practical MCP experience, including MCP clients/servers, tool and resource exposure, secure access, JSON-RPC-style communication, and integration with engineering systems.
• Strong scripting and automation skills using Tcl, Python, Perl, shell, or equivalent flow automation technologies.
• Experience with major EDA ecosystems such as Synopsys, Cadence, Siemens EDA, or equivalent internal platforms.
• Ability to translate design challenges into repeatable methodology improvements, reusable automation, and measurable productivity gains.
• Experience defining and executing deployment and migration strategies from current script-driven digital design flows to goal-driven agentic flows, including phased rollout, MCP/tool-adapter integration, validation against golden flows, human-in-the-loop checkpoints, observability, governance, rollback planning, and production adoption across RTL-to-GDS workflows.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with AI-enabled EDA, agent orchestration, retrieval-augmented generation, multi-agent workflows, and workflow state management.
• Experience developing MCP-enabled connectors or tool adapters for EDA tools, job schedulers, dashboards, repositories, databases, or compute environments.
• Experience building production-quality flows with observability, auditability, permission control, evaluation harnesses, regression validation, documentation, and release management.

About NXP

NXP is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer regardless of age, color, national origin, race, religion, creed, gender, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, marital status, status as a disabled veteran and/or veteran of the Vietnam Era or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local law. In addition, NXP will provide reasonable accommodations for otherwise qualified disabled individuals.

NXP Semiconductors N.V. (NASDAQ: NXPI) enables a smarter, safer, and more sustainable world through innovation. As the world leader in secure connectivity solutions for embedded applications, NXP is pushing boundaries in the automotive, industrial & IoT, mobile, and communication infrastructure markets. For more information, visit www.nxp.com Bright Minds. Bright Futures. We believe that a key component to growing our business is to develop our people. To enable you to grow your career at NXP, we offer online and offline learning opportunities to help you develop some of your core and professional skills.

Commitment

We recognize NXP is a powerful change agent as we continue to deliver innovative solutions that advance a more sustainable future. We remain steadfast in our commitment to sustainability and making measurable year-on-year progress. Also, we aim to create an inclusive work environment and we will not tolerate racism, discrimination or harassment of any kind. We have programs in place focused on diversity, inclusion and equality.

Thank you for considering a career at NXP.

Any candidate profiles or resume submitted without a prior written agreement or explicit request from our Talent Acquisition team will be considered unsolicited. Such submissions will be deemed free of any obligations, and no fees will be paid by NXP or any of its affiliates, subsidiaries, or divisions - regardless of whether the candidate is hired, either coincidentally or otherwise. Thank you for your understanding.