Principal Physical Design Engineer

About the role

Astera Labs, which builds rack-scale AI connectivity solutions, is looking for a Senior Physical Design Engineer to join its high-performance design team. The team works on next-generation transceiver intellectual property (IP) targeting TSMC 3nm and other advanced technology nodes.

Key responsibilities

• Perform block-level and top-level physical implementation, including floorplanning, placement, clock tree synthesis (CTS), routing and physical verification for high-speed designs.
• Collaborate with RTL and STA teams to ensure clean handoffs and support timing, area and power convergence.
• Apply physical design techniques for multiple voltage and frequency domains, hierarchical design and physical-aware synthesis.
• Work on EM/IR analysis and power grid optimization, congestion analysis and mitigation, clock skew optimization and RC extraction-aware placement and routing.
• Integrate IPs and top-level blocks, supporting floorplan development and chip partitioning for high-speed transceivers.
• Perform ECO implementation and help with tapeout signoff, keeping DRC, LVS, ANT, CELL and ERC databases clean.
• Use industry-standard tools such as ICC2, Innovus, Voltus, RedHawk and Calibre.
• Develop automation scripts in Tcl, Python or Perl to improve physical design flows.

Required profile

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Electrical Engineering, Electronics Engineering or a related field.
• 5-10 years of experience in physical design, preferably with advanced technology nodes.
• Experience integrating high-speed IPs such as SerDes or PHYs into SoC or chiplet-based environments.
• Experience on high-frequency datapath and DSP-related designs.
• Solid scripting skills and good problem-solving skills; able to work in cross-functional teams.

Required skills

• Floorplanning, placement, CTS, routing and IR drop mitigation
• DRC, LVS, ANT and ERC signoff checks and debugging
• Hands-on use of Synopsys ICC2, Cadence Innovus, Calibre and Voltus
• Tcl, Python or Perl scripting