Research Engineer, ML for EDA

ChipAgents • San Jose, CA

3d

About The Position

ChipAgents is hiring Research Engineers to apply machine learning to electronic design automation (EDA). The role focuses on power, performance, and area tradeoffs in chip design, applying ML across the design flow and turning successful research into capabilities in the ChipAgents platform. Research Engineers own projects from problem definition through data, modeling, evaluation, and production, working with ML researchers, software engineers, and hardware experts.

Research results are deployed to semiconductor companies and evaluated on customer designs and public benchmarks. The role offers the opportunity to own research problems end to end, contribute to the research direction of a growing team, and publish or present work at conferences where appropriate.

Requirements

• MS or PhD in Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent research experience in industry.
• Strong ML fundamentals and hands-on experience designing, training, and debugging deep learning models in PyTorch or similar platforms.
• Working knowledge of the digital design flow, from RTL through synthesis, place and route, and timing and power analysis.
• Experience running and scripting commercial or open-source EDA tools.
• Strong Python software engineering skills and a record of writing research code that others build on.
• Ability to identify the crux of an ambiguous research problem, choose the experiments that matter, and explain results clearly to ML and hardware engineers.
• Self-directed and ambitious, with strong ownership and good judgment about when work is ready to ship.

Nice To Haves

• Publications at EDA venues such as DAC, ICCAD, MLCAD, or ISPD, or at ML venues such as NeurIPS, ICML, or ICLR.
• Prior work applying ML to EDA or chip design problems.
• Experience with ML on graphs or other structured data.
• Industry experience in physical design, timing closure, or power analysis.
• Experience with LLMs or agent systems.
• Experience running large-scale training or data generation on compute clusters.

Responsibilities

• Lead research projects applying machine learning to power, performance, and area problems in chip design, from problem definition to production.
• Build datasets and benchmarks from EDA tool flows across a range of designs and technologies.
• Design, train, and evaluate ML models on hardware design data.
• Form clear hypotheses, establish strong baselines, and distinguish meaningful improvements from benchmark noise.
• Work with engineering and product teams to bring research results into the ChipAgents platform.
• Write well-architected, maintainable code that others can build on.

Benefits

• Unlimited PTO.
• Full benefits, including medical, vision, dental, and 401(k).
• Equity.
• Two engineering-centric offices with free parking, a private gym, and free lunch, drinks, and snacks.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level