Why This Job is Featured on The SaaS Jobs
Hardware is not a common focus area on SaaS job boards, but it increasingly underpins modern software delivered as a service, especially where AI workloads and infrastructure efficiency shape product capabilities. This Physical Design Engineer role sits in that intersection, supporting custom silicon that ultimately influences the cost, performance, and reliability profile of services delivered at scale. It is a reminder that the SaaS ecosystem includes deep technical roles that determine what software platforms can sustainably offer.
From a career standpoint, the position builds durable leverage for professionals who want to understand how cloud-era products are constrained and enabled by compute. Ownership of physical implementation, methodology, and tooling connects day-to-day execution to repeatable engineering systems, a theme that translates across high-growth SaaS environments where automation and throughput matter. Close collaboration with RTL, EDA partners, and signoff processes also develops fluency across interfaces that many software-first teams depend on but rarely internalize.
This role tends to suit engineers who prefer measurable outcomes and rigorous trade-off work, and who enjoy improving workflows as much as delivering a single block. It aligns well with those aiming to deepen expertise in implementation while staying connected to product-impacting infrastructure decisions.
The section above is editorial commentary from The SaaS Jobs, provided to help SaaS professionals understand the role in a broader industry context.
Job Description
About the Team
OpenAI’s Hardware team designs the custom silicon that powers the world’s most advanced AI systems. From system-level architecture to custom circuit implementations, we partner closely with model and infrastructure teams to deliver performance, power, and efficiency breakthroughs across all layers of the stack.
About the Role
We are seeking a highly skilled Silicon Implementation Engineer with deep expertise in physical design and methodology. This individual contributor role sits within our physical design team and is central to delivering power, performance, and area (PPA) optimized datapath and interconnect solutions for next-generation AI accelerators.
You’ll work closely with RTL designers to define and execute on physical design strategies. You will develop tools, flows and methodologies to increase team productivity. Your work will directly impact silicon’s performance and cost efficiency, as well as the team’s execution velocity and quality.
In this role, you will:
Develop, build and own tools, flows and methodologies for physical implementation
Own physical implementation of floorplan blocks from floorplanning to final signoff
Collaborate with RTL designers to drive optimal block implementation solutions
Analyze and optimize design for timing, power, and area trade-offs, working in collaboration with EDA vendors and ASIC partners
Qualifications:
BS w/ 4+ or MS with 2+ years or PhD with 0-1 year(s) of relevant industry experience in physical design and methodology development
Demonstrated success in taping out complex silicon designs
Hands-on experience with block physical implementation and PPA convergence
Strong coding experience with python, bazel, TCL
Strong experience building physical design tools, flows and methodologies
Strong understanding of microarchitecture, RTL design, physical design, circuit design, physical verification and timing closure.
Deep familiarity with industry-standard tools and flows for physical synthesis, PNR, LEC and power estimation
Bonus:
Experience with AI or HPC-focused chips
Experience with optimizing PPA for high performance compute cores
Hands-on experience with top-level design methodologies
About OpenAI
OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity.
We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.
For additional information, please see OpenAI’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement.
Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law, and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act, for US-based candidates. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, confidential, and non-public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.
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