# Physical Design Engineer, Forward Deployed Engineering

**Company**: OpenAI
**Location**: San Francisco
**Work arrangement**: hybrid
**Experience**: senior
**Job type**: Full time
**Salary**: $162K – $302K
**Category**: Engineering
**Industry**: Technology
**Wikidata**: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q124605186

**Apply**: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/18d65004-a399-4a33-80bc-10f33bff2ed0?utm_source=yubhub.co&utm_medium=jobs_feed&utm_campaign=apply
**Canonical**: https://yubhub.co/jobs/job_e958f3b8-311

## Description

We are seeking a highly skilled Physical Design Engineer to join our semiconductor-focused Forward Deployed Engineering team. This is a senior IC role that will begin with a strong emphasis on physical design expertise, technical judgment, advisory leverage, and customer credibility, with the expectation that the person will grow into a broader Forward Deployed Engineering role over time.

In the near term, you will serve as the team's physical design SME across semiconductor deployments: helping FDEs, Product, and Research understand backend implementation workflows, pressure-test AI-assisted solution ideas against real physical design constraints, and raise the quality of our customer-facing technical work. You will help the broader team build fluency in implementation flows, EDA tooling, signoff methodology, and the trade-offs that shape physical design decisions in practice.

Over time, we expect this role to expand beyond SME support into broader FDE ownership: partnering directly with customers, shaping deployment strategy, building and iterating production-grade AI systems, driving technical workstreams, and helping turn high-touch semiconductor deployments into repeatable solutions.

This is a strong fit for someone who brings deep physical design expertise today and is excited to grow into a customer-facing, systems-building, delivery-oriented FDE role.

## Skills

### Required
- physical design
- EDA tools
- synthesis
- PNR
- STA
- physical verification
- equivalence checking
- power analysis
- scripting
- automation

### Nice to have
- semiconductor companies
- design environments
- tool stacks
- external customers
- strategic accounts
- design partners
- evaluation workflows
- benchmarks
- acceptance criteria
- AI/LLM systems

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Source: [Apply at jobs.ashbyhq.com](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/18d65004-a399-4a33-80bc-10f33bff2ed0?utm_source=yubhub.co&utm_medium=jobs_feed&utm_campaign=apply)