Technical Staff Engineer - Layout - PA - Allentown - Winchester Rd, United States
Originally posted 10 September 2026 by the employer.
About the role
As a Principal Engineer - Layout, you will be responsible for leading and executing automated place-and-route activities from floorplanning through GDSII tapeout, leveraging advanced physical design expertise and automation capabilities.
What you'll do
- Lead and execute automated place-and-route activities from floorplanning through GDSII tapeout.
- Drive productivity improvements and optimize design flows.
- Develop physical design methodologies.
- Solve complex physical design challenges and improve design quality and efficiency.
- Support successful project execution through design signoff and tapeout.
What you'll need
- 10+ years of experience in automated place and route and physical design.
- Strong scripting and automation skills using Tcl, Perl, Python, and shell scripting.
- Experience developing automation solutions for timing and design closure, data extraction and analysis, QoR monitoring, ECO automation, and physical verification analysis.
- Extensive experience with floorplanning and partitioning, power planning and power integrity, placement and routing optimization, Clock Tree Synthesis (CTS), timing closure, signal integrity analysis, physical verification, ECO implementation, and design signoff, including LEC/CLP checks.
- Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
Nice to have
- Tcl scripting experience.
Skills: automated place-and-route, GDSII tapeout, floorplanning, timing closure, physical verification
This role has been open 36 days — well below the 59-day median for Physical Design roles.
Physical Design · Physical Design
|
Open roles in category
662
|
Median days open
59 d
|
Median salary
$187k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | Microchip Technology | All employers we track in this specialty (662 roles · 81 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 15 | 662 |
| Open roles in the wider Physical Implementation family | 30 | 1443 · 110 employers |
| Median days open | 85 d | 59 d (+26 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $187k |
Skills observed across this category: automated place-and-route, GDSII tapeout, floorplanning, timing closure, physical verification
Who's hiring in this category
- Qualcomm · 119 open roles · median 44 d
- AMD · 63 open roles · median 23 d
- NVIDIA · 38 open roles · median 69 d
- Synopsys · 37 open roles · median 31 d
- Intel Corporation · 36 open roles · median 10 d
- Broadcom · 31 open roles · median 96 d
How we counted: 662 open Physical Design (Physical Design) roles from 81 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 17 Oct 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 Physical Implementation family row. Figures refresh nightly.