Senior Applications Engineer — PPA & Timing Champion

Synopsys; Sunnyvale (CA); On-site; USD 157,000 - 235,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Annual bonus

Equity

Discretionary bonuses

Health benefits

Job summary

Synopsys is seeking an Applications Engineering Senior Staff Engineer in Sunnyvale, CA to lead pre-sales and post-sales engagements, debug complex physical design issues, and deliver optimized flows for cutting-edge nodes.

You will collaborate with customers to translate their constraints into production-ready methodologies, travel to sites as needed, and help shape tool capabilities based on real-world tape-out challenges.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering or equivalent with 9+ years of hands-on ASIC physical design experience.
• Deep expertise in RTL-to-GDSII flows using industry-standard tools, with direct experience in placement, optimization, clock tree synthesis, and routing.
• Hands-on proficiency with Synopsys backend tools including Fusion Compiler, ICC2, Design Compiler, and PrimeTime.
• Strong understanding of advanced node design challenges (7nm and below).
• Experience with timing closure techniques, multi-scenario optimization, and noise analysis in complex SoC designs.
• Willingness to travel up to 30% to customer sites.

Responsibilities

• Support pre-sales and post-sales engagements with semiconductor customers, demonstrating Synopsys physical design tools including Fusion Compiler and ICC2 in live technical sessions.
• Debug complex physical design issues across the RTL-to-GDSII flow, working directly with customer design teams to resolve placement, routing, timing closure, and congestion challenges at advanced nodes.
• Develop and deliver technical methodologies for clock tree synthesis, AI-driven optimization, macro placement, and timing closure that customers can adopt in production flows.
• Build proof-of-concept designs and benchmarks that show measurable PPA improvements using Synopsys tools compared to customer baseline flows.
• Collaborate with product engineering teams to translate customer pain points into feature requests, tool enhancements, and methodology improvements.
• Train customer engineers on advanced Synopsys tool capabilities, from multi-scenario optimization to noise-aware routing techniques.
• Travel to customer sites to provide hands-on technical support during critical project phases, including tape-out preparation and bring-up.

Skills

Technical communication

Customer engagements

Problem solving

Travel readiness

Education

Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering or equivalent

Master's degree

Tools

Fusion Compiler

ICC2

Design Compiler

PrimeTime

Job description

Synopsys is seeking an Applications Engineering Senior Staff Engineer in Sunnyvale, CA to lead pre-sales and post-sales engagements, debug complex physical design issues, and deliver optimized flows for cutting-edge nodes.

You will collaborate with customers to translate their constraints into production-ready methodologies, travel to sites as needed, and help shape tool capabilities based on real-world tape-out challenges.