Director of CAD & IT

Cspeed • Palo Alto, CA

32d • Onsite

About The Position

Cspeed IO is a stealth startup backed by Sutter Hill Ventures and Atreides Capital, headquartered in Palo Alto, CA. Our executive team has a proven track record of building and scaling category-defining semiconductor and infrastructure businesses. Cspeed IO is developing next-generation optical semiconductor solutions for the AI infrastructure market, focused on enabling true “scale-up” architectures. Our mission is to replace traditional copper interconnects with advanced fiber-optic technologies that overcome the limitations of existing optics solutions and architectures.

This is a build role spanning three intertwined domains: design infrastructure (the CAD, compute, and EDA environment our silicon depends on), corporate IT (identity, endpoints, connectivity, and SaaS for a five-site global company), and the security program that spans both. There is no internal IT department today; the environment is MSP-supported, and the architecture is yours to define. You will operate an EDA environment representing $5–10M in annual spend, a three-zone infrastructure model (Corporate, Design/CAD, Lab/OT) governed by export-control classification. CAD and IT carry equal weight, and security is required within both. Our technology is export-controlled, our customers are the most security-demanding infrastructure buyers on earth, and there is no CISO above this role. We expect aggression on AI: this role drives aggressive AI use and adoption across the company rather than waiting to be asked.

Requirements

• CAD: 10+ years in semiconductor design infrastructure at a fabless or IDM; experience running design compute, EDA licensing operations at $5–10M scale, and PDK/design-data management; supported tape-outs under deadline.
• IT: Experience running identity as a system (SAML/SCIM, conditional access, hardware keys); managed a multi-country Windows/macOS/Linux fleet; managed an MSP against an SLA; completed customer security questionnaires unaided.
• Security: Operated EDR across mixed Windows/Linux fleets; personally owned a real incident end to end; managed security through outsourced SOC/MDR and SIEM vendors and owned the detection outcome; built access-controlled environments for sensitive IP.
• Across all domains: Built from near-zero at least once; aggressive, hands-on adopter of AI in their own work; effective across Asia time zones with a small team plus vendors; translates technical risk into executive decisions; a U.S. person or eligible for required export authorizations.

Nice To Haves

• TCP/deemed-export operating experience
• Defender, Intune, and Entra conditional access in production
• FreeIPA in Linux design environments
• ISO 27001, SOC 2, or NIST 800-171 exposure

Responsibilities

• Design infrastructure & CAD: Design compute (batch scheduling, cloud burst), EDA licensing operations (license servers, utilization telemetry, denial-rate and cost-per-seat reporting); manage the access-controlled PDK enclave, design data management, and storage engineered for EDA workloads.
• Corporate IT: Manage identity as a system (single IdP, SAML/SCIM, conditional access, hardware-key MFA), the global Windows/macOS/Linux endpoint fleet under unified MDM, WAN across five sites, the SaaS portfolio and its spend, and the MSP managed against an SLA.
• Security across both zones: Implement EDR on every host including Linux design machines; manage the outsourced security stack (SOC/MDR partner and SIEM), owning the outcome; implement phishing-resistant MFA; manage incident response end to end across time zones; ensure segmentation between zones; respond to customer security reviews.
• Export-controlled environments: Operate the design zone under the Technology Control Plan, including deemed-export access controls with per-nationality entitlements, logging, quarterly access reviews, and audit-ready evidence.
• AI adoption: Drive aggressive AI use across engineering and corporate workflows, including selecting tools, building guardrails for AI safety within an export-controlled environment, and leading by example through personal use.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director
• Education Level: No Education Listed