SoC Physical Design Engineer, Top Level

Apple; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

Apple seeks a senior engineer to own complete chip design from netlist to tapeout, collaborating with FE and physical design teams to drive architecture, timing, and convergence.

You will lead place and route efforts, ensure robust physical design flows, and guide IP integration across large-scale SoCs, with a strong emphasis on yield, thermal management, and multi-Vt strategies.

Qualifications

• Minimum BS and 10+ years of relevant industry experience.
• Familiar with ASIC integration including floorplanning, clock and power distribution, global signal planning, I/O planning, and hard IP integration.
• Experience with large SoC designs (>20M gates) and frequencies >1GHz using sub 45nm technologies.
• Knowledge of CAD tools for floorplanning, P&R, global timing verification, and physical design verification.
• Understanding of Design for Yield, Manufacturability, multi-Vt strategies and thermal management.

Responsibilities

• Work with FE team to understand chip architecture and drive physical aspects early in the design cycle.
• Drive methodologies and best practices for physical design, create guidelines, track progress.
• Act as focal point for place and route, coordinate across P&R engineers, set milestones and plan work.
• Resolve design and flow issues related to physical design and drive execution.

Skills

ASIC integration

SoC design issues

Hierarchical design

IP requirements

Floorplanning

P&R flows

Global timing verification

Physical design verification flows

Design for Yield

Multi-Vt strategies

Thermal management

Education

Bachelor's degree

Tools

Floorplanning tools

P&R tools

Job description

Summary

Imagine what you could do here! At Apple, new ideas have a way of becoming extraordinary products, services, and customer experiences very quickly. Bring passion and dedication to your job and there's no telling what you could accomplish. Dynamic, hardworking people and inspiring, innovative technologies are the norm here. The people who work here have reinvented entire industries with all Apple Hardware products. The same passion for innovation that goes into our products also applies to our practices strengthening our commitment to leave the world better than we found it. Join us to help deliver the next groundbreaking Apple product!In this highly visible role, you will be responsible for implementing complete chip design from netlist to tapeout.

Description

• Work with the FE team to understand chip architecture and drive physical aspects early in the design cycle.
• Work with the physical design team to drive methodologies and "best known methods" to streamline physical design work, come up with guidelines and checklists, drive execution, and track progress.
• Be a focal point for place and route, drive the work among place and route engineers, set goals and milestones, plan short and long-term work, understand dependencies between different domains like top, STA, block place and route.
• Resolve design and flow issues related to physical design, identify potential solutions, and drive execution.

Minimum Qualifications

Minimum BS and 10+ years of relevant industry experience

Preferred Qualifications

• Needs to be familiar with aspects of ASIC integration including floorplanning, clock and power distribution, global signal planning, I/O planning, and hard IP integration.
• Experience with typical SoC issues such as multiple voltage and clock domains, ESD strategies, mixed signal block integration, and package interactions.
• Familiar with a hierarchical design approach, top-down design, budgeting, timing and physical convergence.
• Experience integrating IP from both internal and external vendors and be able to specify and drive IP requirements in the physical domain is required.
• Experience with large SoC designs (>20M gates) with frequencies in excess of 1GHz using innovative sub 45nm technologies.
• A detailed understanding of database management issues is required.
• From a CAD tool perspective, experience with floorplanning tools, P&R flows, global timing verification and physical design verification flows is required.
• Familiar with various process-related design issues including Design for Yield and Manufacturability, multi Vt strategies and thermal Mgt.