Senior Physical Design Engineer

Job Title

Senior Physical Design Engineer

Role Summary

Join Microsoft SCHIE (Silicon, Cloud Hardware, and Infrastructure Engineering) within the Compute Silicon & Manufacturing Engineering organization to drive physical design and manufacturing readiness for cloud compute chips. The role focuses on floorplanning, synthesis-to-signoff flow, timing, power, and cross-team technical leadership to enable high-volume cloud hardware deployment.

Experience Level

Senior — typically 8+ years of relevant physical design or silicon engineering experience.

Responsibilities

The engineer will lead physical implementation and signoff for mixed-signal IPs and blocks, collaborate with RTL and cross-functional teams, and improve flows and methodologies.

• Own floorplanning and design planning for mixed-signal IPs (analog + digital) and optimize power delivery and interfaces (topmetal & bump planning).
• Drive and execute flow from synthesis through place-and-route and full signoff: timing, physical verification, EMIR, formal equivalence, and low-power verification.
• Collaborate with RTL teams to resolve toplevel and block closure issues and ensure design convergence.
• Influence and improve tools, flows, and methodology using data-driven approaches.
• Make technical trade-offs between power, area, and timing and provide technical leadership across teams.

Requirements

Must-have technical skills, practical experience, and screening requirements.

• 8+ years of relevant physical design or silicon engineering experience.
• Proven track record implementing designs through synthesis, floorplanning, place-and-route, extraction, timing, and physical verification.
• Hands-on experience with commercial EDA tools such as PrimeTime, StarRC, Design Compiler, ICC, Innovus (or equivalent).
• Strong understanding of constraints generation, STA, timing optimization, and timing closure; CTS and global clock distribution in multi-voltage/multi-domain designs.
• Experience with power rollup methodology, low-power techniques (UPF/LP), reliability, signal integrity, and noise analysis.
• Familiarity with formal equivalence checks, extraction, EMIR signoff, and full-chip signoff activities; tape-out experience at modern foundry nodes is preferred.
• Strong scripting and automation skills (Perl, TCL, Python) and data-driven problem solving.
• Effective communication and collaboration skills; ability to lead technical discussions across teams.
• Willingness and ability to meet Microsoft background and export-control screening requirements; successful candidate must provide documentation of citizenship or residency as required for access to export-controlled information.

Education Requirements

BS or MS in Electrical Engineering or Computer Engineering. Degrees in closely related technical fields may also be acceptable.

About the Company

Company: Microsoft

Headquarters: Redmond, Washington, United States

Microsoft is a global technology company that develops and sells software, services, devices, and solutions. Known for its Windows operating system, Office suite, and Azure cloud platform, Microsoft aims to empower individuals and organizations around the world to achieve more. The company fosters a culture of innovation and inclusion, focusing on delivering trusted experiences to customers and partners globally.