Founding Silicon Engineer for AI Accelerator Startup

Empathy Talent; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 200,000 - 300,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Health benefits

401(k)

Equipment budget

Job summary

Empathy Talent is partnering with an early-stage AI semiconductor startup building next-generation computing hardware to power demanding AI workloads. Backed by a highly technical founding team, the company focuses on high-performance AI accelerators with efficiency, scalability, and performance.

This Founding Silicon Engineer role leads the development of custom silicon for AI accelerators, from FPGA prototyping to ASIC tapeout and bring-up.

Qualifications

• Strong background in RTL design, pipelining, timing, and microarchitecture.
• Hands-on FPGA development from RTL to validation on hardware.
• Proficient in Verilog/SystemVerilog for ASIC development.
• Experience with simulation, linting, synthesis, timing closure, and CDC.
• Experience automating hardware design flows using Python/Tcl/Make/Nix.

Responsibilities

• Lead development and optimization of FPGA prototypes for AI accelerator architectures.
• Design, implement, and review synthesizable RTL for custom ASIC development.
• Architect high-performance datapaths, memory subsystems, and interconnects.
• Establish and maintain RTL development flows: linting, simulation, synthesis, timing analysis, verification.
• Develop synthesis constraints, perform timing closure, optimize for power, performance, and area.

Skills

RTL design

FPGA development

Digital design

Architectural decisions

Cross-disciplinary collaboration

Tools

Verilog/SystemVerilog

Python

Tcl

Make

Nix

SDC constraints

Job description

Empathy Talent is partnering with an early-stage AI semiconductor startup building next-generation computing hardware to power demanding AI workloads. Backed by a highly technical founding team, the company focuses on high-performance AI accelerators with efficiency, scalability, and performance.

This Founding Silicon Engineer role leads the development of custom silicon for AI accelerators, from FPGA prototyping to ASIC tapeout and bring-up.