Forward Deployed Engineer

Stealth Startup; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Stealth Startup in San Francisco is seeking a Forward-Deployed Engineer to work directly with semiconductor companies and chip designers to understand design workflows and where AI can help. You’ll translate real-world challenges into product requirements for our AI-native chip design platform, bridging customers and the internal engineering and AI teams.

A background in analog/mixed-signal design and experience with EDA tools are highly valued.

Qualifications

• Strong background in analog or mixed-signal IC design and end-to-end chip design flow.
• Experience with custom layout, physical design, circuit design, or physical verification.
• Familiarity with analog/mixed-signal design challenges such as matching, parasitics, routing, extraction, DRC, LVS.
• Experience with EDA tools and semiconductor design workflows.
• Ability to understand complex technical problems and communicate clearly to customers and software/AI engineers.

Responsibilities

• Work directly with semiconductor customers to understand design workflows, requirements, and pain points.
• Partner with analog, mixed-signal, RF, and custom circuit designers to understand layout and physical design approaches.
• Identify opportunities where AI can automate or improve manual design processes.
• Translate customer feedback into clear product requirements and engineering priorities.
• Collaborate with engineering to turn requirements into product capabilities.
• Analyze real customer designs to find high-impact automation opportunities.
• Develop deep expertise in physical design workflows for analog/mixed-signal circuits.
• Handle chip-design data formats like LEF, DEF, GDS, SPICE.

Skills

Analog/mixed-signal design

EDA tools

Technical communication

Problem solving

Customer-facing

Tools

EDA tools

Job description

We’re an early-stage startup building AI systems for semiconductor design. Our team brings together deep expertise across chip design, machine learning, and AI, with a mission to fundamentally improve how modern chips are designed.

As AI drives demand for increasingly specialized silicon, chip design is becoming more complex, expensive, and time-consuming. We’re applying AI to some of the hardest parts of the design process, starting with layout, with the goal of giving semiconductor engineers new tools for solving problems that have traditionally required significant manual effort and deep domain expertise.

We’re a small, highly technical team working at the intersection of AI and semiconductor design. We work in person because we believe the hardest technical problems are best solved collaboratively. You’ll have the opportunity to move between customer conversations, circuit and layout workflows, product requirements, and engineering discussions, working closely with both our customers and internal technical team. We value people who are curious, adaptable, comfortable with ambiguity, and excited to learn new tools and domains quickly.

The Role

As a Forward-Deployed Engineer, you’ll work directly with semiconductor companies and chip designers to understand how they design, where their existing EDA workflows fall short, and where AI can have the biggest impact.

You’ll serve as a technical bridge between customers and our internal engineering and AI teams. You’ll take real-world design challenges and translate them into product requirements, workflows, and capabilities that our team can build.

This role is particularly well suited for someone with an analog or mixed-signal design background who understands the realities of taking a circuit from design through layout and physical verification. You should be comfortable discussing design tradeoffs with experienced semiconductor engineers and digging into the details of their workflows, while also being excited to help shape a new AI-native approach to chip design.

Software engineering experience is a plus, but not required. Experience with C++, Rust, Python, EDA automation, AI/ML, or technical customer-facing engineering is particularly valuable.

Most importantly, we’re looking for someone who understands semiconductor design deeply and is excited about rethinking how that work gets done with AI.

Responsibilities

• Work directly with semiconductor customers to understand their design workflows, technical requirements, and biggest pain points
• Partner with analog, mixed-signal, RF, and custom circuit designers to understand how they approach layout and physical design
• Identify opportunities where AI can automate or improve traditionally manual design processes
• Translate customer feedback and design challenges into clear product requirements and engineering priorities
• Work closely with our engineering team to turn those requirements into product capabilities
• Investigate real customer designs and workflows to identify high-impact opportunities for automation
• Develop deep expertise in physical design workflows, particularly for analog and mixed-signal circuits
• Work with common chip design data and formats including LEF, DEF, GDS, SPICE, and related representations
• Act as the technical connection between our customers, product, and engineering teams

Requirements

• Strong background in analog or mixed-signal IC design, with a solid understanding of the end-to-end chip design flow
• Experience with custom layout, physical design, circuit design, or physical verification
• Familiarity with analog and mixed-signal design challenges such as matching, parasitics, device placement, routing, extraction, simulation, DRC, and LVS
• Experience working with EDA tools and semiconductor design workflows
• Ability to understand complex technical problems and communicate them clearly to both customers and software/AI engineers
• Strong problem-solving skills and comfort operating in ambiguous, early-stage environments
• Interest in working directly with customers and using their feedback to shape a product