Silicon Implementation Engineer – Custom Circuits

About The Team
OpenAI's Hardware organization develops silicon and system-level solutions designed for the unique demands of advanced AI workloads. The team is responsible for building the next generation of AI-native silicon while working closely with software and research partners to co-design hardware tightly integrated with AI models. In addition to delivering production-grade silicon for OpenAI's supercomputing infrastructure, the team also creates custom design tools and methodologies that accelerate innovation and enable hardware optimized specifically for AI.

About The Role
We are seeking a highly-skilled Silicon Implementation Engineer with deep expertise in custom circuits and physical design. This individual-contributor role sits within our Physical Design team and is central to delivering power, performance, and area (PPA)-optimized datapath and interconnect solutions for next-generation AI accelerators.

You'll work closely with RTL and physical implementation teams to define and execute custom circuit and physical design strategies. Your work will directly impact the performance and cost efficiency of the final silicon.

In This Role, You Will

• Own physical implementation of custom datapath and interconnect circuits from floorplanning through final sign-off.
• Collaborate with RTL and physical designers to drive optimal implementation solutions for custom standard cells, SRAMs, and application-specific macro blocks.
• Apply custom and semi-custom physical implementation strategies to optimize designs for power, performance, and area.

Qualifications

• BS with 10+ years, MS with 8+ years, or PhD with 3+ years of relevant industry experience in physical implementation of custom digital circuits (PhD highly preferred).
• Demonstrated success taping out complex silicon designs.
• Hands-on experience with physical implementation of custom blocks including standard cells, application-specific SRAM macros, and large datapath structures; research or industry experience with techniques such as compute-in-memory is preferred.
• Strong understanding and experience in physical design, circuit design, and scripting/automation; working knowledge of RTL and microarchitecture is preferred.
• Hands-on experience building tools, flows, and methodologies for custom circuit and semi-custom physical implementation.

To comply with U.S. export control laws and regulations, candidates for this role may need to meet certain legal status requirements as provided in those laws and regulations.
About OpenAI
OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity.

We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.

For additional information, please see OpenAI's Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement.

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with applicable law, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, confidential, and non-public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.

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At OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. Join us in shaping the future of technology.

Compensation Range: $310K - $460K