Sr Principal Software Engineer, Innovus — Physical Synthesis & Optimization

## Sr Principal Software Engineer, Innovus — Physical Synthesis & Optimization Apply:
SAN JOSE:
Full time:
Posted Today:
R56531##
** At Cadence, we hire and develop leaders and innovators who want to make an impact on the world of technology.**### Why Cadence? — Design for AI. AI for Design.

Cadence sits at the intersection of semiconductor innovation and high-performance computing. Through
** Design for AI**, our EDA technologies enable the advanced silicon platforms powering modern AI infrastructure. Through
** AI for Design**, we integrate machine learning, data-driven optimization, and intelligent automation into our industry-leading implementation flows to transform how chips are designed.

As part of the
** Innovus R&D team**, you will build high-performance software engines and algorithms behind next-generation physical synthesis, helping push the boundaries of performance, power, area (PPA), timing closure, and design productivity at scale.###

Role Overview We are looking for a
** Senior / Staff Software Engineer
** to contribute to the design and development of next-generation physical synthesis and optimization engines within  this hands-on engineering role, you will solve challenging computational problems at the intersection of advanced graph/spatial algorithms, high-performance C++, parallel and distributed computing, and large-scale numerical optimization. Your work will operate at semiconductor scale—where algorithmic efficiency, memory footprint, and multi-core scalability directly impact the ability to design billions of transistors on advanced process nodes.###

Key Responsibilities Core Engine & Algorithm Development
* Design, implement, unit-test, and optimize high-performance C++ engines for physical synthesis, placement, and timing-driven optimization.
* Develop advanced graph algorithms, spatial data structures, and continuous/combinatorial optimization techniques for massive-scale physical design workloads.
* Identify and eliminate CPU bottlenecks, memory footprint overhead, and algorithmic scaling limits in production C++ codebases.
* Translate research concepts and mathematical formulations into robust, maintainable, production-quality software.

Parallel & Distributed Computing
* Implement multi-threaded and distributed algorithms for computationally intensive implementation engines.
* Scale physical design workloads across multi-core systems and compute clusters while minimizing synchronization overhead and memory bandwidth constraints.
* Apply modern profiling and benchmarking tools to maximize CPU utilization, cache efficiency, and execution throughput.

Physical Design Optimization & R&D
* Develop physical design optimization modules addressing timing, power, performance, area (PPA), and congestion.
* Work directly with large-scale layout and netlist data to build practical, highly scalable optimization strategies.
* Collaborate with R&D colleagues to integrate data-driven and AI-assisted optimization heuristics into core synthesis flows.### Qualifications Required
* *
* Education:

** Master’s or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related quantitative field (or equivalent hands-on industry experience).
* ** C++ Expertise:
** Strong hands-on experience developing high-performance, production-quality C++ (C++17/20) in Linux environments.
* ** Core Fundamentals:
** Solid foundation in data structures, graph algorithms, computational geometry, memory management, and software architecture.
* ** Concurrent Programming:
** Practical experience with multithreaded or concurrent programming and low-level performance profiling.
* ** Problem Solving:
** Proven ability to analyze, debug, and optimize complex algorithmic bottlenecks in large-scale software systems.

Preferred
* ** EDA / Physical Design:
** Prior experience developing EDA tools, with specific knowledge in physical synthesis, global/detail placement, static timing analysis (STA), routing, or timing closure.
* ** AI & Machine Learning:
** Exposure to applying machine learning, deep learning, reinforcement learning, or data-driven heuristics to software optimization problems.
* ** Scripting & Tooling:
** Proficiency with Python, Tcl, or shell scripting for benchmarking and workflow automation.
* ** HPC & Acceleration:
** Experience with SIMD vectorization, GPU/CUDA acceleration, or large-scale distributed compute frameworks.### The Opportunity This role is ideal for a hands-on developer who loves tackling hard algorithmic and…