Sr Principal Design Engineer

As a Senior Principal Digital Implementation Engineer, you will provide technical leadership across challenging silicon programs, applying deep silicon implementation and advanced EDA methods to deliver results. You will collaborate with customers and Cadence teams to develop innovative flows for advanced-node designs and guide a team of implementation engineers. You will influence tool development, drive best practices, and represent Cadence as a technical thought leader. This role combines hands-on engineering with strategic leadership in a fast-moving semiconductor ecosystem.

• Provide technical leadership for complex silicon programs from synthesis to tapeout
• Develop and deploy advanced methodologies to achieve aggressive PPA targets
• Collaborate with PSG engineering to solve design implementation challenges
• Influence tool development and product gaps with Cadence R&D
• Drive innovations across physical design domains and signoff processes
• Evaluate and introduce Cadence technologies into customer flows
• Lead technical investigations into silicon failures and performance limits
• Establish reusable methodologies and best practices across multiple nodes
• Mentor implementation engineers and act as technical authority in EMEA
• Represent Cadence as a technical thought leader with customers and partners
• Present results to leadership, customers, and industry communities
• Assist in pre-sales support and effort estimation with Design Engineering Director and Sales team
• Scope areas may include RTL-to-GDSII, timing, power, SI, DTCO, advanced packaging, and AI acceleration

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering or related discipline
• 15+ years of semiconductor engineering experience or equivalent technical achievement
• Proven tape-out experience on advanced process nodes
• Experience with CPUs/GPUs/AI accelerators/SoCs or similar high-performance devices
• Extensive experience delivering complex semiconductor products
• Deep expertise in one or more areas of the implementation flow and broad lifecycle understanding
• Experience with advanced process technologies and complex physical implementation challenges
• Ability to diagnose problems crossing functional boundaries
• Experience working with customers, foundries, or technology partners
• Excellent technical communication and presentation skills
• Ability to influence technical direction without relying solely on authority
• Technical team leadership experience
• Excellent oral and written English
• Self-motivated with strong planning and interpersonal skills

• Technical leadership
• Mentoring and coaching
• Cross-functional collaboration
• Advanced-node digital implementation
• RTL-to-GDSII flows
• Physical design and optimization