Physical Design Engineer, Forward Deployed Engineering
OpenAI · San Francisco
About this role
**Physical Design Engineer, Forward Deployed Engineering** **About the Team** OpenAI's Forward Deployed Engineering team partners with leading semiconductor companies to deploy production-grade AI systems across the entire chip design lifecycle: design, verification, and physical design. **About the Role** We are seeking a highly skilled Physical Design Engineer to join our semiconductor-focused Forward Deployed Engineering team. This senior IC role emphasizes physical design expertise, technical judgment, and customer credibility, with growth into a broader Forward Deployed Engineering role over time. **Key Responsibilities** • Serve as the physical design SME for semiconductor customer engagements • Partner with FDEs during customer discovery to translate pain points into solution hypotheses • Support customer-facing technical conversations as a trusted advisor • Help shape AI-assisted solutions across physical design workflows (floorplanning, place and route, clocking, timing closure, power, signoff) • Curate evaluation datasets, golden tasks, and acceptance criteria for physical design use cases • Build prototypes, benchmarks, and tools that validate opportunities • Educate and mentor the broader FDE team on physical design concepts and EDA tooling • Surface customer signal to Product and Research to shape roadmap and platform capabilities • Progressively take on broader FDE responsibilities including customer discovery and technical ownership **Minimum Qualifications** • BS with 7+ years, MS with 5+ years, or equivalent industry experience in physical design/backend signoff • Demonstrated success bringing complex designs through tapeout • Deep familiarity with industry-standard EDA tools and flows • Strong understanding of physical design intersections with microarchitecture, RTL, and verification • Strong communication and collaboration skills • Strong scripting and automation skills (Python, Tcl, or similar) • Excited to grow into broader Forward Deployed Engineering responsibilities **Preferred Qualifications** • Experience across multiple semiconductor companies or tool stacks • Experience in technical advisory or customer-facing delivery roles • Experience defining evaluation workflows and benchmarks • Exposure to design and/or verification workflows • Experience applying AI/LLM systems to semiconductor workflows **About OpenAI** OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We are an equal opportunity employer.
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