River

River

Member of Technical Staff, Hardware, Physical Design Engineer

Palo Alto, CA; Austin, TX · Staff+

H1B sponsorship available$200k-$420kDetected 25 days ago
PythonMachine LearningDeep LearningLogisticsElectrical Engineering

About the role

  • We are looking for exceptional physical design engineers to transform our high-performance architectural concepts into production-ready silicon.
  • You will own the physical implementation flow from synthesis through tape-out, pushing the absolute limits of advanced foundry nodes to maximize PPA.
  • You will take ownership of block-level and top-level physical design, collaborating tightly with RTL designers to close timing, electrical, and physical verification for our custom AI accelerator.

Responsibilities

  • Drive Synthesis and Place-and-Route: Own the physical implementation flow from RTL synthesis through placement, clock tree synthesis (CTS), and routing for high-performance blocks.
  • Maximize PPA: Optimize layout topologies to maximize cell density and utilization, architecting robust power delivery networks (PDN) to minimize IR drop and meet aggressive frequency targets on advanced foundry nodes.
  • Execute Physical Verification: Run and debug sign-off physical verification, including Design Rule Checking (DRC), Layout Versus Schematic (LVS), and Antenna rule compliance.
  • Co-Design with RTL: Partner directly with the RTL team to provide early physical feedback on logic structures, pipeline depth, and routing congestion to streamline implementation closure.
  • Advance Flow Automation: Integrate and develop next-generation AI-driven EDA tools and workflows to fundamentally accelerate the physical implementation cycle and optimize design closure.
  • Proven track record running logic synthesis, integrating compiled memory macros, and managing multi-voltage design techniques using power intent specifications (UPF/CPF).
  • Exceptional debugging skills with a first-principles approach to navigating complex trade-offs between congestion, timing slack, and power density in highly utilized designs.
  • A highly collaborative mindset and a bias for action to push boundaries and co-design effectively with RTL and architecture teams.
  • Own the physical implementation flow from RTL synthesis through placement, clock tree synthesis (CTS), and routing for high-performance blocks.

Requirements

  • Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering or Computer Engineering, and 5+ years practical industry experience working with advanced process nodes (7nm or below).
  • Deep hands-on proficiency with industry-standard physical design, timing, and sign-off tools (e.g., Innovus, Fusion Compiler, PrimeTime, RedHawk).

Nice to have

  • (We encourage you to apply even if you don't meet all of these)
  • An extensive track record of delivering high-performance SoCs, CPUs, GPUs, or AI accelerators through multiple successful production tape-outs.
  • Hands-on experience optimizing physical layouts for highly parallel compute structures, such as systolic arrays, large tensor execution units, or high-bandwidth memory (HBM) interfaces.
  • Visa Sponsorship: We sponsor visas and are committed to supporting the process for the right candidate.

Skills

  • Skills and Qualifications

Compensation

  • Depending on background, skills, and experience, the expected annual salary range for this position is $200,000 - $420,000 USD.

Benefits

  • River AI offers generous health, dental, and vision benefits, unlimited PTO, and relocation support as needed.

Company info

  • We are scientists, engineers, and builders from the industry's top tech companies and AI labs.
  • We bring a proven track record of scaling consumer systems for hundreds of millions of users and architecting the pre-training infrastructure behind today's frontier models.
  • At River, our mission is to create personal AI owned and shaped by each individual.
  • personal hardware for local inference, bespoke training infrastructure, next-generation UIs, and frontier deep learning research.

Visa & Work Authorization

  • We sponsor visas and are committed to supporting the process for the right candidate.
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