Physical Design Engineer (Place & Route)

As an Astera Labs Physical Design Engineer (Place & Route) to play a crucial role in the planning, coordination, and execution supporting the design of Astera Labs' portfolio of connectivity ASICs used in the world's leading cloud service providers, server and network OEMs. This is a generalist physical design role requiring broad expertise across floorplanning, place-and-route, timing closure, and physical sign-off. You will work closely with designers, verification engineering, and engineering operations to drive blocks from RTL to GDSII. This role is fully on-site and in-person.

Basic Qualifications:

• Strong academic and technical background in electrical engineering. A Bachelor's degree in EE / Computer Engineering is required, and a Master's degree is preferred.
• 8+ years of experience supporting or developing complex SoC/silicon products for Server, Storage, and/or Networking applications.
• Professional attitude with the ability to prioritize a dynamic list of multiple tasks, plan and prepare for customer meetings in advance, and work with minimal guidance and supervision.
• Entrepreneurial, open-minded behavior and can-do attitude. Think and act fast with the customer in mind!

Required Experience:

• Hands-on and thorough knowledge of synthesis, place and route, timing, extraction, EM-IR, formal verification (equivalence) and other backend tools and methodologies for technologies 7nm or less.
• Block level ownership from architecture to GDSII, driving multiple complex designs to production.
• Experience with Cadence and/or Synopsys physical design tools/flows.
• Familiarity and working knowledge of SystemVerilog/Verilog.
• Proven expertise in developing/maintaining timing constraints, timing signoff methodology, timing closure at the block or full-chip level.
• Experience in working with IP vendors for both RTL and hard-macro blocks.
• Good scripting skills in Tcl, Python, or Perl.

Nice to Have Experience Includes:

• Knowledge of design for test (DFT).
• Familiarity with ECO methodologies and tools.
• Knowledge of LVS/DRC closures.
• Experience with high-speed SERDES or Ethernet PHY design integration.
• Experience with clock tree synthesis optimization.
• Familiarity with PCIe, CXL, or Ethernet connectivity protocols.