Senior Physical Design CAD Engineer

Meet the team

You’ll join the CAD Physical Design team within Cisco Silicon One, responsible for end-to-end backend methodology and flow development from RTL to GDS. This team plays a vital role in delivering high-quality VLSI designs and enabling advanced silicon innovation. Our design center brings together experts across silicon hardware and software, encouraging a collaborative environment passionate about technical excellence and continuous improvement.

As a member of our team, you’ll help shape and enhance signoff and implementation flows that support the delivery of high-performance, large-scale, and highly complex devices. Your work will directly contribute to pushing the boundaries of modern chip design.

• Develop, maintain, and improve backend methodologies and flows from RTL to GDS to enable robust, high-quality VLSI designs.
• Contribute to the evolution of signoff flows, including physical synthesis, place and route, power optimization, timing closure, and physical closure.
• Collaborate closely with multi-functional engineering teams to support and improve implementation tool flows.
• Work with advanced silicon technologies and process nodes to deliver reliable, ground breaking designs.

We are looking for a CAD Physical Design Engineer with 8+ years of experience in Physical Design CAD with strong PnR and STA expertise, or a Design Engineer with solid backend design experience.

• B.Sc. or M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field.
• Strong understanding of Static Timing Analysis (STA) flows.
• Familiarity with place and route (PnR), physical verification (PV), and formal verification (FV).
• Hands-on experience with Physical Design CAD using industry-standard EDA tools (e.g., Synopsys, Cadence).

• Ability to work optimally both independently and as part of a collaborative team.
• Strong self-learning attitude with clear and effective communication skills.

At Cisco, we’re revolutionizing how data and infrastructure connect and protect organizations in the AI era – and beyond. We’ve been innovating fearlessly for 40 years to create solutions that power how humans and technology work together across the physical and digital worlds. These solutions provide customers with unparalleled security, visibility, and insights across the entire digital footprint.

Fueled by the depth and breadth of our technology, we experiment and create meaningful solutions. Add to that our worldwide network of doers and experts, and you’ll see that the opportunities to grow and build are limitless. We work as a team, collaborating with empathy to make really big things happen on a global scale. Because our solutions are everywhere, our impact is everywhere. 

We are Cisco, and our power starts with you.