Physical Design Engineer, Hardware at River AI Inc. | Austin, TX, US | Rezi

Physical Design Engineer, Hardware at River AI Inc.

Physical Design Engineer, Hardware

River AI Inc. · Austin, TX, US

1 weeks ago

Physical Design Engineer, Hardware

River AI Inc. · Austin, TX, US

9 days ago
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About the Role

We are looking for exceptional physical design engineers to transform our high-performance architectural concepts into production-ready silicon. You will own the physical implementation flow from synthesis through tape-out, pushing the absolute limits of advanced foundry nodes to maximize PPA. You will take ownership of block-level and top-level physical design, collaborating tightly with RTL designers to close timing, electrical, and physical verification for our custom AI accelerator.

Responsibilities

  • Drive Synthesis and Place-and-Route: Own the physical implementation flow from RTL synthesis through placement, clock tree synthesis (CTS), and routing for high-performance blocks.
  • Maximize PPA: Optimize layout topologies to maximize cell density and utilization, architecting robust power delivery networks (PDN) to minimize IR drop and meet aggressive frequency targets on advanced foundry nodes.
  • Close Timing & Electricals: Conduct static timing analysis (STA), fix setup/hold violations across complex clock domains, and resolve signal integrity (SI), electromigration (EM) and IR-drop constraints.
  • Execute Physical Verification: Run and debug sign-off physical verification, including Design Rule Checking (DRC), Layout Versus Schematic (LVS), and Antenna rule compliance.
  • Co-Design with RTL: Partner directly with the RTL team to provide early physical feedback on logic structures, pipeline depth, and routing congestion to streamline implementation closure.
  • Advance Flow Automation: Integrate and develop next-generation AI-driven EDA tools and workflows to fundamentally accelerate the physical implementation cycle and optimize design closure.

Requirements

  • Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering or Computer Engineering, and 5+ years practical industry experience working with advanced process nodes (7nm or below).
  • Deep hands-on proficiency with industry-standard physical design, timing, and sign-off tools (e.g., Innovus, Fusion Compiler, PrimeTime, RedHawk).
  • Proven track record running logic synthesis, integrating compiled memory macros, and managing multi-voltage design techniques using power intent specifications (UPF/CPF).
  • Exceptional debugging skills with a first-principles approach to navigating complex trade-offs between congestion, timing slack, and power density in highly utilized designs.
  • A highly collaborative mindset and a bias for action to push boundaries and co-design effectively with RTL and architecture teams.
  • An extensive track record of delivering high-performance SoCs, CPUs, GPUs, or AI accelerators through multiple successful production tape-outs.
  • Hands-on experience optimizing physical layouts for highly parallel compute structures, such as systolic arrays, large tensor execution units, or high-bandwidth memory (HBM) interfaces.
  • Experience custom-scripting or extending EDA tools (using Tcl, Python, or specialized ML APIs) to automate physical design closure and build bespoke workflow pipelines.

Skills

  • Physical Design
  • Timing Analysis
  • Sign-off Tools
  • Logic Synthesis
  • Memory Macro Integration
  • Multi-voltage Design
  • Power Intent Specifications (UPF/CPF)
  • Debugging
  • EDA Tools
  • Tcl
  • Python
  • ML APIs

Location

  • Austin, Texas
  • Palo Alto, California

Work Type

  • Onsite

Experience Level

  • 5+ years practical industry experience
  • Senior

Education Level

  • Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering or Computer Engineering

Salary/Compensations

  • $200,000 - $420,000 USD

Benefits

  • Generous health, dental, and vision benefits
  • Unlimited PTO
  • Relocation support

About the Company

  • At River, our mission is to create personal AI owned and shaped by each individual.
  • To achieve this, we are rewriting the entire stack from scratch: personal hardware for local inference, bespoke training infrastructure, next-generation UIs, and frontier deep learning research.
  • We are scientists, engineers, and builders from the industry's top tech companies and AI labs.
  • We bring a proven track record of scaling consumer systems for hundreds of millions of users and architecting the pre-training infrastructure behind today's frontier models.

Equal Opportunity

  • We sponsor visas and are committed to supporting the process for the right candidate.