{"id":354850,"url":"https://alion.io/job/etched-physical-design-engineer","title":"Physical Design Engineer","company":{"id":5021,"name":"Etched","domain":"etched.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/etched","size_band":"1001-5000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":88,"open_postings":80,"ghost_share":0.125,"stale_share":0,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":142,"computed_at":"2026-10-26T05:57:25Z"}},"role":"Industrial Engineering","role_family":"Industrial Engineering","seniority":"senior","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Austin, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":200000,"max":375000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":375000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":5,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Formal Verification","optional":false},{"name":"LLM","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"Synopsys Fusion Compiler","optional":false},{"name":"Synopsys PrimeTime","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-04-16T02:44:31Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-04-16","last_verified_at":"2026-10-26T19:17:09Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":193,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":0,"flags":["company_stale"],"days_open":193},"description":"About Etched\nEtched is building hardware for frontier intelligence. We co-design chips, racks, software, and manufacturing to deliver best-in-class throughput and latency across both prefill and decode workloads. Our first products are heavily focused on inference. Backed by hundreds of millions from top-tier investors and staffed by leading engineers, Etched is redefining the infrastructure layer for the fastest growing industry in history.\nJob Summary\nEtched is looking for exceptional Physical Design engineers to join our team. In this role, you\nwill own block-level implementation and verification, drive timing closure and PPA optimization, supervise 3rd party design work, and help improve our design flows and iteration speed.\nKey Responsibilities\nDeeply understand what is involved in physical design\n\nRunning PD flows to close blocks, support ASIC infrastructure, automate PD flows, improve CAD infrastructure\n\nCollaborate with RTL Designers and provide Physical Design feedback to improve PPA\n\nDrive dashboards that show the convergence of projects related to PD\n\nOptimize tool flows, working with EDA vendors to incorporate the latest features\n\nAccountable for block level closure\n\nSupervise the outsourcing of physical design to a 3rd party service\n\nYou may be a good fit if you have\n5-10+ years of previous experience with PD\n\nTools, flow, and design methodology from RTL synthesis to GDSII sign-off\n\nExperience with back-end design and timing closure on advanced process nodes (5nm and below)\n\nExperience with Cadence (Innovus, Genus) or Synopsys (ICC2, Fusion Compiler) automated RTL-to-GDSII flows\n\nExperience with sign-off tools (PrimeTime, Tempus, Voltus, etc.)\n\nExperience with UPF-based low power design methodology, power verification,synthesis, scan insertion/ATPG, formal verification, floorplanning, placement, CTS, routing, IR drop, and EM/antenna analysis\n\nDeeply creative and able to think from first principles\n\nStrong candidates may also have experience with\nFamiliarity with modern ML and LLM model architectures\n\nAbility to program with Python or another scripting language\n\nFamiliarity with AI tools for programming/coding\n\nStartup experience or comfort working in fast-paced environments\n\nBenefits\nMedical, dental, and vision packages with generous premium coverage\n$500 per month credit for waiving medical benefits\n\nVarious wellness benefits covering fitness, mental health, and more\n\nDaily lunch + dinner in our office\n\nUnlimited compute budget subject to ROI justification\n\nHow we’re different\nEtched believes in the Bitter Lesson. We are the first inference-focused frontier AI system. Our addressable market is the entirety of inference, unlike many of our competitors.\nWe greatly value engineering skills. We do not have strict boundaries between engineering and research, and we expect all of our technical staff to contribute to both as needed.\nThis role is based in our Austin office, with regular time spent working alongside the team in San Jose. During the first quarter, expect to spend approximately two weeks per month at our San Jose headquarters to ramp quickly. After that, this shifts to roughly one week per month for ongoing collaboration.","description_format":"text","description_chars":3199,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":5,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Processors, MCUs & AI Chips","AI Compute & Inference","AI Chips & Accelerators"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-05T19:13:53Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"US","licensed_sponsor":true,"evidence":"H-1B filings in 12 months: 5","filings_12m":5,"filings_prev_12m":0,"green_card_filings_12m":0,"median_offered_wage_usd":173500,"route":null,"cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-10-15T11:24:14+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)"],"filings_for_role_12m":0}],"liveness":{"score":33,"band":"fade","label":"Fading","p_open":1,"p_active":0.746,"p_room":0.44,"age_days":193,"expected_fill_days":142,"reasons":["conf:0","velocity","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-10-26T05:57:25Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":375000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/etched-physical-design-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/etched-physical-design-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-26T20:58:23Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":28213,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-27T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":5021},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=5021"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fetched-physical-design-engineer"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fetched-physical-design-engineer"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fetched-physical-design-engineer"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/etched-physical-design-engineer\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fetched-physical-design-engineer"}]}