Physical Design Engineer

About This Role

This engineering role is for an experienced and highly skilled VLSI engineer to join Tesla's AI Hardware team, which designs and develops advanced AI inference chips and custom supercomputer systems like Dojo. The team is expanding its physical design capabilities to work on a wider range of projects, building on in-house SOC design expertise. The position involves the design, construction, and integration of SOCs, IP, circuits, tool flows, and methodologies into systems using advanced technologies, from definition through characterization.

Responsibilities

• Work on complex design blocks and SOCs from early design stage to tape out
• Floorplan and partition designs to meet area, timing, and power requirements
• Construct high-speed blocks, from synthesis, place, and route, out through timing, physical, and electrical closure to meet performance, robustness, reliability, and power targets
• Read RTL, understand block micro-architecture, perform RTL modifications and prove logical equivalence as needed

Requirements

• Engineering degree in a relevant field, or equivalent work experience
• 2+ years of industry work experience in VLSI/IC design
• Knowledge and experience with logic design and synthesis tools and techniques
• Proficient in place and route tools and approaches
• Proficient in timing and electrical analysis in advanced nodes, including high-frequency design closure, IR drop, power, and reliability
• Skilled with CAD tools and scripting languages (Perl or Python)
• Understand cell and transistor level digital circuit design, memory and clock structures, and design methodologies
• Good understanding of RTL, DFT, and microarchitecture
• Good communication skills and a demonstrated team player and flexible and able to work independently in a fast-paced environment

Nice to have:

• Experience in any of these areas: SOC level physical integration and validation, post-silicon characterization

About the Company

The Tesla AI Hardware team is at the forefront of revolutionizing artificial intelligence through cutting-edge hardware innovation, designing and developing advanced AI inference chips tailored to accelerate Tesla’s machine learning capabilities. A key part of this effort is Dojo, Tesla's custom supercomputer system built to efficiently train massive neural networks. The work of Tesla's AI Hardware team powers the neural networks behind Full Self-Driving (FSD) and the Tesla humanoid robot, Optimus, pushing the boundaries of computational efficiency and performance.