About the role
IC/RTL Design Engineer/ Front-End Engineer
About the role. You design and implement the digital front-end RTL at the heart of the chip — including the high-speed datapath that moves data between UCIe and the optical front end. Guided by the interface specs and coding standards, you take blocks from micro-architecture through clean, timing-aware RTL and block-level verification. It's a hands-on role with room to grow your scope as the team and the chip mature.
What you'll do
- Develop block-level micro-architecture for your assigned blocks, and contribute to interface and register definitions.
- Design and implement front-end RTL blocks in SystemVerilog — datapath elements, the UCIe streaming/RDI adapter, elastic FIFOs, and supporting logic.
- Integrate IP and support parameterization for configurability.
- Write clean, lint-clean, CDC/RDC-clean RTL that follows the coding and quality standards.
- Write block-level testbenches, sanity checks, and assertions (SVA) for your own blocks before handoff to DV.
- Power- and timing-aware design — managing block activity, clock-gating, pipelining, and retiming; partner with the backend team on physical closure for your blocks.
- Bring-up and debug across simulation and emulation / FPGA prototyping; support DV and silicon bring-up, including DFT/debug hooks in your blocks.
- Collaborate with the architecture, modelling, DV, DFT, and backend teams as your blocks move through the flow.
Required
- BS or MS in Electrical/Computer Engineering (or equivalent experience).
- 3+ years of digital RTL design in SystemVerilog, with blocks taken from micro-architecture through to verification handoff.
- Solid digital design fundamentals: pipelining, FSMs, FIFOs, clock-domain crossing, and streaming/bus interfaces (e.g., AXI).
- Lint and CDC/RDC discipline and clean-RTL practices.
- Power- and timing-aware design practices; comfort with synthesis and timing closure, working with the backend team.
- Strong debug skills in simulation; scripting in Python, Perl, or TCL.
Preferred
- High-speed datapath, SerDes-adjacent, or interface design exposure (UCIe, PCIe/CXL, or similar).
- FEC/coding datapath familiarity (e.g., Reed-Solomon) and gray-code mapping.
- Assertion-based verification (SVA) and familiarity with UVM block-level testbenches; emulation / FPGA prototyping experience.
- Exposure to scale-up / scale-out interconnects or network switch / NIC / memory-controller datapaths.
- Low-power / UPF and DFT (scan) concepts.
- Optical transceiver, CPO, or linear-drive optics background; advanced-node (N5/N3/N2) design experience.