Principal Product Engineer - Custom Layout & Virtuoso

Cadence is a pivotal leader in electronic design, building upon more than 30 years of computational software expertise. The company applies its underlying Intelligent System Design strategy to deliver software, hardware and IP that turn design concepts into reality.

Cadence customers are the world's most innovative companies, delivering extraordinary electronic products from chips to boards to systems for the most dynamic market applications including consumer, hyperscale computing, 5G communications, automotive, aerospace, industrial, and health.

Principal Product Engineer
- Custom Layout & Virtuoso Applications

Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Product Engineering Group Director

The Principal Product Engineer
- Custom Layout & Virtuoso Applications plays a central role in bridging Cadence's world-class electronic design tools with the needs of our most strategic customers. Working at the intersection of customer success, R&D, and product development, this role shapes how customers adopt and succeed with the Virtuoso platform for custom analog and Fin Fet-based design.

The successful candidate will drive both technical depth and cross-functional collaboration—translating real-world customer challenges into product improvements that benefit the broader Cadence ecosystem.

• Engage directly with customers to understand their custom analog design and layout requirements—particularly Fin Fet-based flows within the Virtuoso platform—and translate those needs into actionable product guidance.
• Attend and contribute to technical review meetings (at Cadence offices and customer sites), delivering presentations and providing expert commentary on product capabilities and roadmap alignment.
• Conduct regular on-site customer visits to deliver education and enablement sessions on the Virtuoso cockpit, debug tool-related issues in context, and capture structured feedback for R&D—filing Change Correction Requests (CCRs) where required.
• Develop and deliver demonstrations and Rapid Adoption Kits (RAKs) that enable the sales team to effectively position Virtuoso products—including delivering training sessions directly to sales and pre-sales teams.
• Build SKILL-based utilities to address specific customer requirements not covered by standard Virtuoso functionality, including defining and executing validation plans before customer delivery.
• Use the Virtuoso platform to create test schematics and layouts, validate newly implemented features, and provide structured feedback to R&D—driving necessary changes through to resolution.
• Author Product Requirement Specifications (PRS) to formalise customer-driven R&D priorities, working within cross-functional teams (CFTs) to achieve alignment across engineering, product, and commercial stakeholders.
• Partner with the Product Validation (PV) team to ensure rigorous validation of customer flows, contributing flow tests for regression testing and quality assurance.
• Collaborate with Technical Publications to ensure documentation is accurate, accessible, and highlights features of strategic relevance to customers.
• Work with marketing to inform tool positioning and licensing strategy based on direct customer feedback and field observations.

• Bachelor's or Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, or a related field— or equivalent professional experience.
• 5-8 years of experience in the electronic design automation (EDA) industry or a closely related technical field.
• Demonstrated experience in custom analog layout, including a strong understanding of the challenges specific to analog layout workflows.
• Hands-on experience with the Virtuoso Layout Suite for connectivity-driven layout.
• Familiarity with the SKILL programming language, with the ability to write functional utilities independently.

• Experience with Fin Fet layout techniques and multi-patterning methodologies.
• Experience with the Virtuoso Analog Design Environment (ADE).
• Knowledge of Innovus and Open-Access frameworks.
• Proficiency in scripting languages such as TCL or Perl.
• Experience working in a customer-facing or field…