Overview In this role you will help advance Cisco's ASIC and hardware automation via AI-assisted design workflows. You'll partner with physical design teams to identify high-value automation targets and improve design QoR and timing sign-off. You will own the end-to-end developer loop from prototype to production, building autonomous placement, routing, and timing workflows. You'll enable Claude-driven PnR iterations and design-rule reference pipelines to accelerate the design cycle.
Compensation / Benefits- medical, dental and vision insurance
- 401(k) with Cisco matching
- paid holidays (including floating holidays)
- paid time off (vacation, sick leave)
- stock grants eligibility
- paid parental leave
Responsibilities- Collaborate with physical design teams to identify high-value automation targets (timing triage, congestion root-cause analysis, floorplan suggestions)
- Evaluate and benchmark LLM outputs against ground truth for Design QoR, timing impact, and sign-off compliance
- Own the full developer loop: prototype, eval, production with a focus on design cycle reduction
- Build agentic PnR workflows where Claude iterates autonomously on placement, routing, and timing constraints based on tool feedback loops
- Create RAG pipelines that index internal PDKs, design rule documents, sign-off checklists, and runbooks for Claude to reference
- Write and maintain Tcl bridge scripts translating Claude's suggested fixes into executable EDA tool commands
- Develop prompt architectures that interpret STA timing reports, DRC logs, congestion maps, and power analysis outputs
Key requirements- Bachelor's degree in Engineering with 15+ years ASIC experience, Master's in Engineering with 12+ years, or PhD with 7+ years
- Proficiency in Python and effective AI prompting for productivity
- Experience building MCP-based wrapper layer connecting Claude to live EDA tools (Innovus, ICC2, Calibre) for real-time copilots
- Experience developing EDA copilots or AI-assisted design tools, plus Docker and containerized EDA environments
- Experience with ML-driven placement and routing (MLPD/ML-driven PnR), OpenAI APIs (GPT-4o, o3), and vector databases (Pinecone or Weaviate)
- Collaborative mindset
- Strong communication
- Problem-solving and curiosity
- Python
- AI prompting and design tooling
- MCP-based wrapper for EDA tools
