Applied Research - Chip Design

Role overview Develop agents, environments, evaluations, and post-training systems for semiconductor design and verification workflows. The work applies reinforcement learning to long, tool-intensive tasks where simulation, verification, timing, power, and area provide concrete feedback. Projects may cover RTL generation and debugging, formal verification, simulation, physical design, optimization, and coordination across electronic design tools, with input from domain experts.

Responsibilities - Translate chip-design workflows into tasks, environments, evaluations, and reward signals for agent training. - Build and test agents that use specialized design and verification tools across multi-step workflows. - Develop post-training experiments and compare results against real baselines. - Evaluate performance using evidence from simulation, verification, timing, power, and area. - Inspect failures and determine whether results stem from the model, data, tool harness, inference, or infrastructure. - Turn effective methods into reusable research, open-source systems, and product capabilities.

Requirements - Hands-on experience with reinforcement learning, post-training, agent systems, evaluation, or closely related experimental work. - Strong experimental judgment: use meaningful baselines, investigate failures, attribute results carefully, and change direction when evidence warrants it. - Strong Python skills and experience building artifacts that others can run, inspect, and extend. - Comfort taking ownership of ambiguous problems and communicating progress to partners and teammates. - Evidence of strong work, such as publications, open-source systems, benchmarks, or shipped products; be prepared to discuss a difficult project and what you learned from its failures.

Benefits and work setup - Full-time role with flexible work location, including remote options. - Listed cash compensation range of $150,000–$300,000, plus equity incentives. - Visa sponsorship and relocation support, professional development budget, and team off-sites and conference attendance.