Physical Design Engineer, Forward Deployed Engineering

About this role

OpenAI seeks a senior Physical Design Engineer to join its Forward Deployed Engineering team, serving as the subject matter expert for semiconductor customer engagements. You'll help teams understand backend implementation workflows, shape AI-assisted solutions for chip design, and progressively grow into broader customer-facing deployment roles.

What you'll do

• Serve as physical design SME for customer engagements, advising on backend workflows, constraints, and opportunities
• Partner with FDEs during customer discovery to translate pain points into solution hypotheses and technical plans
• Support customer conversations as a trusted technical advisor on physical design decisions
• Shape AI-assisted solutions across floorplanning, place and route, timing closure, power analysis, and signoff
• Curate evaluation datasets, rubrics, and acceptance criteria for physical design use cases with realistic success metrics
• Mentor the broader FDE team on physical design concepts, EDA tooling, and key trade-offs

What they're looking for

• Physical design and backend implementation for complex ASICs and SoCs
• Floorplanning, place and route, clock tree synthesis, timing closure, and signoff
• Industry EDA tools (synthesis, PNR, STA, physical verification, power analysis)
• Understanding of RTL, microarchitecture, verification, and design methodology
• Strong communication and technical advisory abilities
• Python, Tcl, or similar scripting and automation
• Systems thinking across the chip design lifecycle
• Customer-facing technical engagement