Senior Physical Design Engineer, Annapurna Labs

Job Title

Senior Physical Design Engineer, Annapurna Labs

Role Summary

Join the Cloud-Scale Machine Learning Acceleration team to design and optimize custom SoCs and server hardware used in AWS machine learning datacenters (Inferentia, Trainium). The role focuses on physical implementation, methodology development, and cross-functional collaboration to achieve timing, power, and area goals at scale.

Experience Level

Senior level. Requires substantial hands-on ASIC physical design experience; the posting specifies at least 6+ years of ASIC physical design experience in industry-level flows.

Responsibilities

The role leads physical implementation and methodology for complex SoC blocks and subsystems and supports architectural feasibility and trade-off studies.

• Collaborate with RTL and architecture teams to evaluate physical feasibility and power-performance-area tradeoffs.
• Drive block and subsystem implementation: synthesis, floorplanning, pin/bus planning, placement, routing, and ECOs.
• Implement power and clock distribution networks; perform congestion, timing closure, and IR drop analysis.
• Lead physical verification and sign-off activities (timing, IR/EM, DRC/LVS, etc.).
• Develop and improve physical design methodologies and flows.
• Evaluate 3rd-party IP for integration and provide physical-domain recommendations and requirements.
• Collaborate within a fast-paced team and mentor less-experienced engineers as needed.

Requirements

Must-have technical skills and relevant experience; preferred items are listed separately.

• Proficient scripting skills (Python, Perl, Bash, or PowerShell).
• Extensive ASIC physical design experience: RTL-to-GDSII block design and sign-off using commercial EDA tools (Cadence, Synopsys, Mentor, or equivalent).
• Hands-on experience with synthesis, equivalency checks, floorplanning, pin/bus planning, place & route, and ECO implementation.
• Strong skills in power/clock distribution, congestion analysis, timing closure, IR drop analysis, and physical verification.
• Deep understanding of sign-off activities including timing and IR/EM analysis.
• Preferred: experience mentoring or leading engineers; developing CAD/tool flows for physical design tasks.
• Preferred: 4+ years integrating third-party IP and specifying physical IP requirements.
• Preferred: familiarity with device physics, custom/semi-custom implementation techniques, and system interfaces (DDR, PCIe, fabrics).
• Preferred: experience extracting design parameters, QOR metrics, and trend analysis.

Education Requirements

BS in Electrical Engineering or Computer Science with 8+ years of relevant experience, or MS in Electrical Engineering or Computer Science with 6+ years of relevant experience (as listed in the posting).

About the Company

Company: Amazon Web Services

Headquarters: Seattle, Washington, USA

Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides a comprehensive and evolving cloud computing platform that includes infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and software as a service (SaaS). AWS allows business and developers to use a wide range of cloud services for computing power, storage, and content delivery, among others, thus fostering innovation and enabling faster deployment of applications. AWS is designed to be scalable, flexible, and cost-effective across industries worldwide.