SoC Physical Design Engineer, Top Level

San Jose Until 9/22/2026 10+ years exp First posted July 24, 2026 Last posted July 24, 2026
Job description

Imagine what you could do here! At Apple, new ideas have a way of becoming extraordinary products, services, and customer experiences very quickly. Bring passion and dedication to your job and there's no telling what you could accomplish. Dynamic, hardworking people and inspiring, innovative technologies are the norm here. The people who work here have reinvented entire industries with all Apple Hardware products. The same passion for innovation that goes into our products also applies to our practices strengthening our commitment to leave the world better than we found it. Join us to help deliver the next groundbreaking Apple product! In this highly visible role, you will be responsible for implementing complete chip design from netlist to tapeout.

Description

• Work with the FE team to understand chip architecture and drive physical aspects early in the design cycle.
• Work with the physical design team to drive methodologies and “best known methods” to streamline physical design work, come up with guidelines and checklists, drive execution, and track progress.
• Be a focal point for place and route, drive the work among place and route engineers, set goals and milestones, plan short and long-term work, understand dependencies between different domains like top, STA, block place and route.
• Resolve design and flow issues related to physical design, identify potential solutions, and drive execution.

Minimum Qualifications

Minimum BS with 10+ years experience.

Preferred Qualifications

Needs to be familiar with aspects of ASIC integration including floorplanning, clock and power distribution, global signal planning, I/O planning, and hard IP integration.
Experience with typical SoC issues such as multiple voltage and clock domains, ESD strategies, mixed signal block integration, and package interactions.
Familiar with a hierarchical design approach, top-down design, budgeting, timing and physical convergence.
Experience integrating IP from both internal and external vendors and be able to specify and drive IP requirements in the physical domain is required.
Experience with large SoC designs (>20M gates) with frequencies in excess of 1GHz using innovative sub 45nm technologies.
A detailed understanding of database management issues is required.
From a CAD tool perspective, experience with floorplanning tools, P&R flows, global timing verification and physical design verification flows is required.
Familiar with various process-related design issues including Design for Yield and Manufacturability, multi Vt strategies and thermal Mgt.

About this role

Summary

Implement chip designs from netlist to tapeout, coordinate physical design tasks.

Job title

SoC Physical Design Engineer, Top Level

Experience level

10+ years

Minimum experience

10+ years exp

Industry

technology

Location requirements

San Jose, on-site only, no remote work allowed

Salary

Not specified

Management role

No

Skills & keywords

Required skills

chip architectureplace and routephysical designtiming verificationIP integration

Preferred skills

ASIC integrationfloorplanning toolsP&R flowsdatabase managementdesign for yield

Specializations

chip designphysical designASIC integrationfloorplanningtiming
Locations

Structured locations inferred from the posting.

San Jose, CA, USA

On-site City