Applications Engineering, Sr. Staff Engineer

Job Title

Applications Engineering, Sr. Staff Engineer

Role Summary

Lead deployment, customer support, and technical direction for VLSI EDA backend tools to enable accurate analysis and design closure for complex SoCs. Work directly with customers, IP providers, foundries, and R&D to translate design challenges into product requirements and validated software releases.

Experience Level

Senior — typically 6–8+ years of relevant industry experience (see Education Requirements for the employer's formal experience-to-degree equivalencies).

Responsibilities

Primary responsibilities focus on technical leadership, customer-facing engineering, and product readiness for advanced process nodes.

• Lead deployment and support of EDA software products and integrated workflows.
• Develop and execute technical campaigns; negotiate success criteria with customers and define refined requirements.
• Design, implement, and validate automated end-to-end workflows that integrate upstream and downstream tools and produce actionable reports.
• Perform technical evaluations to understand customer requirements and translate them into scalable workflows and specification documents.
• Provide domain expertise and troubleshooting for voltage drop, electromigration, KCL/KVL, extraction, and circuit solving.
• Deliver training and technical education to customers; mentor junior engineers.
• Collaborate with R&D to enhance and validate products on target platforms and ensure readiness for new PDKs and manufacturing processes.

Requirements

Must-have technical skills and experience. Education and degree equivalencies are listed in Education Requirements below.

• Proficient in TCL and Python for tool automation and scripting.
• Experience with semiconductor and systems design spanning digital, analog, mixed-signal, and RF domains.
• Practical experience supporting large-scale commercial EDA software and customer deployments.
• Familiarity with simulation methodologies, running benchmarks, and modeling/simulation of engineered products and processes.
• Experience diagnosing and triaging complex workflow and integration issues.
• Domain knowledge of power/signals/reliability integrity topics and post-layout backend tools (examples: Totem, Totem-SC, Pathfinder, Pathfinder-SC, Redhawk-SC).
• Background in ASIC/SoC physical design, custom circuit design, and sign-off flows for advanced nodes.
• Ability to author clear technical specifications and lead cross-functional engineering efforts.
• Customer-facing communication skills and experience delivering training and technical consultation.

Education Requirements

Master's degree (or foreign equivalent) in Electrical or Electronics Engineering or a related field plus six (6) years relevant experience; or a Bachelor's degree (or foreign equivalent) in Electrical/Electronics Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field plus eight (8) years relevant experience. Employer accepts foreign equivalents and equivalent practical experience as specified.

About the Company

Company: Synopsys

Headquarters: Mountain View, California, USA

Synopsys is a leading company in electronic design automation (EDA) and semiconductor IP solutions. It provides tools and services for designing and verifying complex semiconductor devices and systems. The company plays a pivotal role in the semiconductor industry, helping engineers innovate and deliver higher-quality products faster. Synopsys is committed to advancing technology standards and offers a range of software and hardware solutions to its clients globally.