Senior CAD Engineer

About Celestial AI

As Generative AI continues to advance, the performance drivers for data center infrastructure are shifting from systems-on-chip (SOCs) to systems of chips. In the era of Accelerated Computing, data center bottlenecks are no longer limited to compute performance, but rather the system’s interconnect bandwidth, memory bandwidth, and memory capacity. Celestial AI’s Photonic Fabric™ is the next-generation interconnect technology that delivers a tenfold increase in performance and energy efficiency compared to competing solutions.

The Photonic Fabric™ is available to our customers in multiple technology offerings, including optical interface chiplets, optical interposers, and Optical Multi-chip Interconnect Bridges (OMIB). This allows customers to easily incorporate high bandwidth, low power, and low latency optical interfaces into their AI accelerators and GPUs. The technology is fully compatible with both protocol and physical layers, including standard 2.5D packaging processes. This seamless integration enables XPUs to utilize optical interconnects for both compute-to-compute and compute-to-memory fabrics, achieving bandwidths in the tens of terabits per second with nanosecond latencies.

This innovation empowers hyperscalers to enhance the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of AI processing by optimizing the XPUs required for training and inference, while significantly reducing the TCO2 impact. To bolster customer collaborations, Celestial AI is developing a Photonic Fabric ecosystem consisting of tier-1 partnerships that include custom silicon/ASIC design, system integrators, HBM memory, assembly, and packaging suppliers.

ABOUT THE ROLE

We are seeking a highly motivated CAD Engineer to develop and maintain our EDA environments, design flows, and infrastructure for cutting-edge chip development. In this role, you will bridge Analog/AMS and ASIC/Digital Verification teams, ensuring seamless integration from schematic capture to signoff. You will own PDK integration, tool automation, cluster optimization, and mixed-signal verification flows while collaborating with designers, IT, and EDA vendors to accelerate our silicon success.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Develop and maintain CAD environments for Analog/AMS, ASIC, Photonics and Systems teams, ensuring seamless integration across the organization.

• Define, implement, and automate design and signoff flows for custom and digital.

• Install, configure, and optimize EDA tools (Cadence/Synopsys/Siemens) and FlexLM licenses.

• Integrate and validate PDKs, tech files and IP libraries, collaborating with foundry and third-party vendors.

• Manage SLURM cluster infrastructure, job scheduling, and resource allocation to maximize ROI.

• Write automation scripts (Python, TCL, SKILL, Bash) to accelerate CAD flows and reduce manual overhead.

• Maintain design repositories (IC Manage gdpxl for analog, Git for ASIC) and enforce version control best practices.

• Debug SPICE, DRC/LVS, PEX, and EMIR issues, working with designers to improve performance and reliability.

• Monitor license/cluster usage, analyze trends, and recommend cost-effective scaling strategies.

• Liaise with EDA vendors to resolve issues, drive tool improvements, and evaluate emerging solutions.

QUALIFICATIONS

• BS/MS in Electrical Engineering or Computer Science

• 10+ years of CAD/EDA design-automation experience supporting analog/AMS and preferably ASIC/DV teams

• Hands-on expertise with Cadence Virtuoso (schematic & layout), ADE Assembler/Explorer, Spectre

• Signoff experience with Pegasus, Quantus, and VoltusFI or equivalent Calibre toolsets

• Strong SKILL scripting and Python development skills for flow automation

• FlexLM license server installation, configuration, and troubleshooting

• IP Version control. Git, IC Manage (gdpxl) or equivalent

• PDK integration for TSMC FinFET nodes down to N5

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Experience with Virtuoso AMS Designer and Cadence Xcelium for behavioral modeling

• Experience with SLURM cluster manager

• Digital RTL-to-GDSII flows (synthesis, PnR, STA, PV)

• Exposure to CI/CD pipelines for CAD-flow release and regression automation

• Strong written and verbal communication skills; proven mentorship of junior engineers

LOCATION: Santa Clara, CA or Toronto, ON, Canada, or Hillsboro, OR

For California Location:

As an early stage start up, we offer an extremely attractive total compensation package inclusive of competitive base salary, bonus and a generous grant of our valuable early-stage equity. The target base salary for this role is approximately $175,000.00 - $215,000.00. The base salary offered may be slightly higher or lower than the target base salary, based on the final scope as determined by the depth of the experience and skills demonstrated by candidate in the interviews.

We offer great benefits (health, vision, dental and life insurance), collaborative and continuous learning work environment, where you will get a chance to work with smart and dedicated people engaged in developing the next generation architecture for high performance computing.

Celestial AI Inc. is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer.

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