Silicon Physical Design CAD Engineer

Overview

Microsoft Silicon, Cloud Hardware, and Infrastructure Engineering (SCHIE) is the team behind Microsoft’s expanding Cloud Infrastructure and responsible for powering Microsoft’s “Intelligent Cloud” mission. SCHIE delivers the core infrastructure and foundational technologies for Microsoft's over 200 online businesses including Bing, MSN, Office 365, Xbox Live, Teams, OneDrive, and the Microsoft Azure platform globally with our server and data center infrastructure, security and compliance, operations, globalization, and manageability solutions.

Our focus is on smart growth, high efficiency, and delivering a trusted experience to customers and partners worldwide and we are looking for engineers to help achieve that mission.

As Microsoft's cloud business continues to accelerate, the ability to deliver new silicon innovations and infrastructure at scale, with quality, speed, and cost efficiency, has never been more critical. Within SCHIE, the Methodology, Infrastructure & Labs Engineering (MILE) organization plays a pivotal role in enabling Microsoft's silicon strategy. MILE is responsible for end-to-end silicon design methodologies, EDA/CAD ecosystems, and the underlying compute infrastructure that powers the development of Microsoft's custom silicon portfolio - the Azure Cobalt and Azure Maia processors.

We are seeking a Silicon Physical Design CAD Engineer to develop, qualify, automate, and support production CAD flows used for Silicon physical design. The role requires a combination of physical design knowledge, EDA tool expertise, scripting skills, and disciplined software development practices.

#SCHIE

Responsibilities

• Develop, maintain, and support physical design CAD flows and methodologies.
• Work with industry-standard EDA tools from Synopsys and Cadence for synthesis, PNR, timing, implementation, and related physical design activities.
• Perform tool and flow qualification, including validation of new EDA tool releases, patches, configurations, and methodology changes before production deployment.
• Develop and maintain regression frameworks to evaluate flow stability, functionality, runtime, resource utilisation, and Quality of Results (QoR).
• Analyse results and identify timing, power, area, runtime, memory, or other unexpected changes.
• Debug complex issues involving EDA tools, scripts, physical design flows, and compute environments.
• Automate repetitive CAD activities and develop scalable utilities using Python, Tcl, Zsh, or similar scripting languages.
• Use Git-based version control and code-review practices to manage CAD flow development and releases.
• Collaborate with physical design engineers, methodology teams, CAD engineers, and EDA vendors to resolve issues and improve design productivity.
• Maintain high-quality documentation for flow releases, regression results, known issues, and methodology changes.
• Continuously improve flow reliability, scalability, automation, and turnaround time.
• Using AI to automate daily tasks and implementing AI based workflows

Required Qualifications

• BS in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or equivalent practical experience.
• At least 3 years of hands-on experience in Silicon Physical Design and/or developing & support Silicon Physical Design CAD Tools, Flows & Methodologies
• Proficiency using Tcl, Python, and similar scripting languages

Preferred Qualifications

• MS in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science or equivalent work experience.
• 4+ years of relevant experience in Silicon Physical Design CAD Tools, Flows & Methodologies
• Hands-on experience in CAD/EDA tool qualifications & releases
• Fundamentals in Synthesis, PnR, Sign-off concepts, and experience working with Synopsys, Cadence, Siemens physical design & sign-off tool stack.
• Relevant experience in developing & maintenance of Physical Design CAD Infrastructure software
• Hands-on experience in developing AI based EDA work-flows
• Self-motivation, Growth mindset, Ownership mindset, attention to detail, and good written, verbal, and presentation skills are critical to success in this role

Other Requirements

Ability to meet Microsoft, customer, and/or government security screening requirements is required for this role. These requirements include, but are not limited to, the following specialized security screening:

Microsoft Cloud Background Check. This position is required to pass the Microsoft Cloud Background Check upon hire or transfer and every two years thereafter.

This role will require access to information that is controlled for export under export control regulations, potentially under the U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations or Export Administration Regulations, the EU Dual Use Regulation, and/or other export control regulations. As a condition of employment, the successful candidate will be required to provide either proof of their country of citizenship or proof of their U.S. permanent residency or other protected status (e.g., under 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3)) for assessment of eligibility to access the export-controlled information.

To meet this legal requirement, and as a condition of employment, the successful candidate’s citizenship will be verified with a valid passport. Lawful permanent residents, refugees, and asylees may verify status using other documents, where applicable.

This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances.

If you need assistance with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.

Insights from previous hires

Top skills: Electronics

Common previous titles: Software Engineer II, Senior Firmware Engineer, Senior Software Engineer, Senior Finance Manager, Senior Principal Architect, Senior Manager, Senior, Senior Hardware Engineer, Senior Quality Engineer, Engineer Senior