Digital Design Flow Architect

Socket.dev; Austin (CA); On-site; USD 130,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

NXP in the United States (Austin) seeks a Digital Design Flow Architect to define and deploy end-to-end RTL-to-GDS flows for advanced process technologies. You will lead flow architecture, automation, and AI-enabled tooling to deliver repeatable, auditable, and scalable design workflows.

You will collaborate across design, CAD/methodology, foundry, and EDA vendors to improve PPA, reliability, and productivity, while guiding deployment and migration of flows to agentic architectures.

Qualifications

• Deep hands-on experience in end-to-end digital implementation, RTL-to-GDS, static design and timing analysis.
• Proven expertise in synthesis, floorplanning, place and route, clock-tree synthesis, and power optimization.
• Hands-on AI workflow development, including autonomous execution patterns and human-in-the-loop checks.
• Practical MCP experience, including tool exposure and JSON-RPC-style communication.
• Strong scripting skills in Tcl, Python, Perl or shell for flow automation.

Responsibilities

• Architect a modular RTL-to-GDS flow covering 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.
• Establish repeatable flow practices with configuration baselines, metrics, dashboards, and audit trails.
• Deploy flows for new process technologies in partnership with design, CAD/methodology, foundry, and EDA vendors.
• Improve productivity and PPA through automation and scalable reuse.

Skills

RTL-to-GDS flow

Synthesis

Static verification

PPA optimization

AI-enabled tooling

Automation scripting

Cross-functional leadership

EDA workflows

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

• Education: B.S. in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field required; M.S. or Ph.D. preferred.
• Level: Director of Technology-level technical leader of digital design, CAD/methodology, EDA implementation, or flow architecture experience.
• 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.

More information about NXP in the United States...

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.