Senior CPU Physical Design Engineer — Shape Next-Gen CPUs

Intel Corporation; Austin (TX); On-site; USD 164,000 - 269,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Stock bonuses

Health plan

Retirement plan

Vacation

Job summary

Intel Corporation in the United States (Texas, Austin) is seeking a Senior CPU Physical Design Engineer to drive physical implementation from RTL to manufacturing for next‑generation CPUs. You will collaborate across architecture, logic, circuit, CAD, and validation teams to optimize power, area, and frequency while enabling scalable design flows.

You will work within the SPE CPU Design team to advance industry-leading processor technologies, participating in floor planning, timing,

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Electrical/Computer Engineering with 6+ years of relevant experience, or Master’s with 4+ years, or PhD with 2+ years.
• Experience with physical design EDA tools (Synopsys Fusion Compiler, Cadence Genus/Innovus or equivalent).
• Experience with scripting languages (TCL, Perl, Python) for tool automation and design exploration.
• Experience in backend design workflows: constraints management, clock tree synthesis, static timing analysis, layout verification.
• Completion of at least one tape-out on advanced process nodes.
• AI/ML based automatic place-and-route methods for design efficiency and quality.

Responsibilities

• Perform physical design implementation for custom CPU designs, transforming RTL into a design database ready for manufacturing.
• Execute floor planning, synthesis, place-and-route, clock tree synthesis, timing analysis, power/clock distribution, and noise analysis.
• Conduct verification and signoff: formal equivalence, reliability, layout verification, and structural checks.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to optimize CPU microarchitectures for power, area, and frequency.
• Build and refine physical design methodologies and flow automation.
• Work with EDA vendors to enhance tools for high-speed, low-power CPUs.
• Analyze design results and propose optimization recommendations.

Skills

Physical design

RTL-to-GDS automation

Tape-out experience

Tool automation scripting

AI/ML-based place-and-route

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Electrical/Computer Engineering

Master’s degree in Electrical/Computer Engineering

PhD in Electrical/Computer Engineering

Tools

Synopsys Fusion Compiler

Cadence Genus/Innovus

RTL-to-GDS automation

Job description

Intel Corporation in the United States (Texas, Austin) is seeking a Senior CPU Physical Design Engineer to drive physical implementation from RTL to manufacturing for next‑generation CPUs. You will collaborate across architecture, logic, circuit, CAD, and validation teams to optimize power, area, and frequency while enabling scalable design flows.

You will work within the SPE CPU Design team to advance industry-leading processor technologies, participating in floor planning, timing,