Research Engineer, ML for EDA

Job Title

Research Engineer, ML for EDA

Role Summary

Conduct research applying machine learning to electronic design automation (EDA) problems across the chip design flow, with the goal of producing methods that can be integrated into the ChipAgents platform.

Work on end-to-end projects spanning problem definition, data and benchmark construction, model development, evaluation, and production handoff while collaborating with ML researchers, software engineers, and hardware experts.

Experience Level

Mid-level (Level - Mid-Career). Years of experience not explicitly specified.

Responsibilities

Lead and execute ML research projects focused on power, performance, and area tradeoffs in chip design, and move successful results toward production.

• Lead research from problem definition through modeling, evaluation, and productionization.
• Build datasets and benchmarks from EDA tool flows across designs and technologies.
• Design, train, and evaluate ML models on hardware design data; establish baselines and robust evaluation criteria.
• Form clear hypotheses, run targeted experiments, and distinguish meaningful improvements from noise.
• Collaborate with engineering and product teams to integrate research into the ChipAgents platform.
• Produce well-architected, maintainable code suitable for team use and production handoff.

Requirements

Must-have technical skills and research capabilities.

• Strong ML fundamentals and hands-on experience designing, training, and debugging deep learning models (PyTorch or similar).
• Working knowledge of the digital design flow, including RTL, synthesis, place-and-route, and timing and power analysis.
• Experience running and scripting EDA tools (commercial or open source).
• Strong Python software engineering skills and a record of writing research code that others build on.
• Ability to identify the core of ambiguous research problems, select the most informative experiments, and communicate results to ML and hardware engineers.
• Self-directed with strong ownership and sound judgment about readiness for production.

Nice-to-have:

• Publications at EDA (DAC, ICCAD, ISPD, MLCAD) or ML (NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR) venues.
• Prior work applying ML to EDA or chip design problems; experience with ML on graphs or structured data.
• Industry experience in physical design, timing closure, or power analysis.
• Experience with LLMs, agent systems, or large-scale training and data generation on compute clusters.

Education Requirements

MS or PhD in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent research experience in industry.

About the Company

Company: ChipAgents

Headquarters: San Jose, CA, United States

ChipAgents is a Series A startup developing agentic AI workflows for chip design and verification, leveraging generative AI and large language models to assist RTL design, simulation, and EDA workflows for semiconductor and cloud customers.