PhD Research Intern, AI Accelerator Design and VLSI - 2027 - CA, Santa Clara, United States
$38 - $94 USD yearly
Originally posted 29 September 2026 by the employer.
Research an AI Accelerator Design combining hardware and software co-design with VLSI techniques.
About the role
This PhD Research Intern role focuses on research at the intersection of AI HW/SW Co-Design, Hardware Accelerator Architecture, IC Design Methodology, and VLSI Design.
What you'll do
- Contribute to novel research advancing the design of accelerators for AI and high-impact workloads.
- Research creative and innovative ASIC and VLSI design techniques and/or novel digital VLSI circuits.
- Research and develop creative and innovative numerical methods for quantization, sparsity, or tensor decomposition grounded in computer arithmetic fundamentals and digital VLSI circuits.
- Collaborate on the development of research prototype testchips.
- Plan to publish and present original research.
What you'll need
- Pursuing a PhD in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field.
- Publication records in ML, architecture, VLSI, or circuits conferences.
- Programming skills in Python/PyTorch and hardware design languages such as SystemVerilog/C++.
- Experience in hardware design with proficiency with modern EDA tool flows.
- Experience with machine learning fundamentals, quantization and numerical methods for machine learning model optimization, digital VLSI circuits for computer arithmetic, and AI hardware micro-architecture.
Nice to have
- Experience with High-Level Synthesis (HLS) tools.
- Tapeout experience.
Skills: AI HW/SW Co-Design, Hardware Accelerator Architecture, VLSI Design, SystemVerilog, EDA tool flows
This role has been open 0 days — well below the 71-day median for AI/ML Hardware Engineering roles.
AI/ML Hardware Engineering · AI ML Hardware
|
Open roles in category
501
|
Median days open
71 d
|
Median salary
$225k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | NVIDIA | All employers we track in this specialty (501 roles · 76 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 84 | 501 |
| Open roles in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family | 971 | 5943 · 145 employers |
| Median days open | 68 d | 71 d (−3 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $225k |
Skills observed across this category: AI HW/SW Co-Design, Hardware Accelerator Architecture, VLSI Design, SystemVerilog, EDA tool flows
Who's hiring in this category
- Qualcomm · 106 open roles · median 104 d
- NVIDIA (this employer) · 81 open roles · median 67 d
- AMD · 42 open roles · median 64 d
- Micron Technology · 29 open roles · median 54 d
- Mobileye · 20 open roles · median 67 d
- Analog Devices · 14 open roles · median 33 d
How we counted: 501 open AI/ML Hardware Engineering (AI ML Hardware) roles from 76 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 30 Sept 2026. Specialty figures count only roles carrying this exact specialty label, so an employer's related work in neighbouring specialties is not included there — it is counted in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family row. Figures refresh nightly.