R&D Engineering, Staff Engineer at Synopsys in Sunnyvale, CA

Job description

Base Salary Range: $138000 - $ 207000 At Synopsys, we want talented people of every background to feel valued and supported to do their best work. Synopsys considers all applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, military veteran status, or disability. In addition to the base salary, this role may be eligible for an annual bonus, equity, and other discretionary bonuses. Synopsys offers comprehensive health, wellness, and financial benefits as part of a competitive total rewards package. The actual compensation offered will be based on a number of job-related factors, including location, skills, experience, and education. Your recruiter can share more specific details on the total rewards package upon request. The base salary range for this role is across the U.S. Job Description and Requirements We Are Synopsys is the leader in engineering solutions from silicon to systems, enabling customers to rapidly innovate AI-powered products. We deliver industry-leading silicon design, IP, simulation and analysis solutions, and design services. We partner closely with our customers across a wide range of industries to maximize their R&D capability and productivity, powering innovation today that ignites the ingenuity of tomorrow. You Are You have spent years understanding that clock networks are not just routing problems, they are the heartbeat of every chip, and when they fail, everything downstream pays the price. You know the difference between a clock tree that closes timing and one that creates more problems than it solves, and you have debugged enough customer designs to spot the warning signs three steps earlier than most engineers. You are comfortable moving between algorithm development in C++ and customer debug sessions where you need to explain why their skew target is fighting their power budget. You do not just run tools, you understand what the tools are doing under the hood, and when the methodology needs to change, you are the one who figures out what comes next. You like hard problems. Balancing skew, insertion delay, power, and timing across advanced nodes is not a checkbox exercise, it is a series of tradeoffs that require both technical depth and judgment. You ask the right questions, you push back when something does not make sense, and you do not settle for "good enough" when the design can be better. At Synopsys, you will work on Fusion Compiler, the tool that powers physical design for the most advanced chips in the world. The problems are real, the customers are demanding, and what you build will matter. What You'll Be Doing Develop and enhance clock tree synthesis and clock optimization algorithms in Fusion Compiler, focusing on skew balancing, useful skew, buffering strategies, and insertion delay optimization Debug timing and clocking issues in customer designs across advanced process nodes (16nm to 5nm), identify root causes, and translate findings into product improvements Design and prototype new CTS and post-CTS optimization flows that integrate into customer methodologies and improve quality of results, runtime, and convergence predictability Collaborate directly with R&D engineers, Customer Application Engineers, and Account Consultants to understand real-world design challenges and align product direction with customer needs Implement and test new features in C++, Python, and Tcl, ensuring correctness, performance, and maintainability across large, complex codebases Analyze clock architecture tradeoffs including skew, latency, OCV-aware optimization, and uncertainty to drive better design outcomes across market verticals Contribute to continuous improvement of clock quality of results, addressing power, timing closure, and robustness across evolving process technologies The Impact You Will Have Improve clock tree synthesis capabilities in Fusion Compiler, directly affecting timing closure success for customers designing AI accele