Applied Research Engineer, Chip Design

NVIDIA is seeking an Applied Research Engineer to drive applied research at the intersection of AI and ASIC design. You will apply the latest AI technologies to NVIDIA's real ASIC design flows and push the limits of what's currently possible.

Responsibilities:

• Apply large language models, coding agents, and agentic systems to core ASIC design problems, including RTL generation, design and formal verification, PPA prediction and optimization.
• Work hands-on with LLMs, RL, RLHF/RLAIF, post-training, evaluation, graders, synthetic data, model training, coding agents, tool-using agents, and production ML systems.
• Deliver results against NVIDIA's internal chip design schedules and activities, with success measured by how much faster the ASIC teams move.
• Build robust data generation and evaluation methodologies to separate working systems from demos.
• Wire coding agents and agentic AI into EDA and validation flows, such as simulation, regressions, waveform and log analysis, and script generation.
• Push the limits of what's possible in chip design with models and research harnesses on top of open-source foundations.
• Partner with NVIDIA's internal Nemotron team to improve models with domain-specific data, feedback, and post-training.

Requirements:

• MS or PhD or equivalent experience in Computer Science, Electrical/Computer Engineering, or related field.
• 8+ years of proven industry experience.
• Domain and technical expertise in front-end ASIC design, verification, timing, and project experience applying agentic AI to chip design and optimization problems.
• Hands-on experience building LLM-based agents or AI tooling that real users depend on.
• Experience with custom model training, fine-tuning, or post-training over proprietary technical data.
• Excellent self-motivation, creativity, and a passion for applied research, plus tight-knit collaboration skills and the ability to work effectively within a team.
• Experience building and maintaining infrastructure (Docker, Slurm, CI/CD, etc.).
• Excellent written and verbal communication, with proven experience presenting and explaining complex technical work.