Physical Design Engineer - Block Level, Subsystem Implementation

About Etched

Etched is building hardware for frontier intelligence. We co-design chips, racks, software, and manufacturing to deliver best-in-class throughput and latency across both prefill and decode workloads. Our first products are heavily focused on inference. Backed by hundreds of millions from top-tier investors and staffed by leading engineers, Etched is redefining the infrastructure layer for the fastest growing industry in history.

 

Job Summary

Etched is building a new category of AI hardware: frontier inference clusters. As a Physical Design Engineer, you will own block-level implementation from synthesis through GDSII sign-off. You will drive Block-level & Subsystem PPA Optimization, and collaborate closely with RTL designers to provide actionable feedback, ensuring we iterate at unprecedented speeds to bring our products to market.

 

Key Responsibilities

- Own block-level and/or subsystem physical design end to end, including floorplanning, synthesis, placement, clock tree synthesis, and routing through GDSII.

- Drive block-level timing closure across all corners and modes, including constraint development, STA debug, and functional and timing ECO implementation.

- Close block-level signoff across EM, IR drop, RC extraction and correlation, and physical verification (DRC, LVS, antenna).

- Generate abstracts, views, and timing budgets for clean hierarchical integration of your blocks into the top level.

- Collaborate with RTL Designers and provide Physical Design feedback to improve PPA.

- Continuously improve the PPA of owned blocks and contribute learnings back into the shared RTL-to-GDSII flow.

- Supervise physical design work outsourced to 3rd party services and be accountable for the quality and closure of delivered blocks.

 

You may be a good fit if you have

- 5-10+ years of previous experience with PD

- Tools, flow, and design methodology from RTL synthesis to GDSII sign-off

- Experience with back-end design and tim...