Senior DFX Software Engineer - Machine Learning - CA, Santa Clara, United States
$152,000 - $287,500 USD yearly
Originally posted 18 August 2026 by the employer.
Enable high quality silicon defect screening to sustain gaming, compute platforms, and Artificial Intelligence.
About the role
This role involves defining and building methodologies, software, and flows tailored to silicon device testing, silicon debug, and silicon failure analysis. The team contributes to the advancement of fields such as gaming, compute platforms, and Artificial Intelligence by enabling high quality silicon defect screening.
What you'll do
- Develop high-performance software for efficient test pattern generation, application on silicon, failure analysis, and yield learning.
- Create efficient parallel graph traversal and graph analysis techniques.
- Collaborate with multi-functional teams to solve problems across multiple areas of expertise.
- Apply LLMs, RAGs, graph-based ML approaches, and reinforcement learning to define innovative solutions.
What you'll need
- BS in EE or CS (or equivalent experience).
- 5+ years of experience in software development.
- Strong programming experience in Python or C++.
- Experience using LLMs, GNNs, and Reinforcement Learning for efficient EDA solutions.
- Expertise in high-performance algorithms for DFT, simulations, and failure analysis.
- Understanding of different agent architectures, RAG systems, and communication protocols.
- Deep familiarity with reinforcement learning algorithms like PPO, SAC, or Q-learning, including tuning hyper-parameters and reward functions.
- Hands-on experience with large-scale training (e.g., ZeRO) and data processing (e.g., Spark).
Nice to have
- Proven deployment of large-scale agentic applications with high concurrency and agility.
- Experience with software and hardware involving DFT, failure analysis, and CAD tools.
- Working experience of agentic models / frameworks, observability and evaluation tools.
- In-depth understanding of graph neural networks and reinforcement learning for logic design automation.
- Experience with fine-tuning large language models, building advanced multi-agent systems, RAG pipelines, and vector databases.
Skills: DFX Software Engineer, Machine Learning, test pattern generation, failure analysis, LLMs/GNNs/RL
This role has been open 58 days — well above the 46-day median for Software Engineering Semiconductor roles.
Software Engineering Semiconductor · AI EDA Design
|
Open roles in category
107
|
Median days open
46 d
|
Median salary
$180k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | NVIDIA | All employers we track in this specialty (107 roles · 31 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 7 | 107 |
| Open roles in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family | 991 | 6157 · 145 employers |
| Median days open | 162 d | 46 d (+116 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $180k |
Skills observed across this category: DFX Software Engineer, Machine Learning, test pattern generation, failure analysis, LLMs/GNNs/RL
Who's hiring in this category
- Applied Materials · 14 open roles · median 55 d
- KLA Corporation · 13 open roles · median 28 d
- Micron Technology · 13 open roles · median 36 d
- Lam Research · 8 open roles · median 20 d
- Cadence Design Systems · 7 open roles · median 18 d
- NVIDIA (this employer) · 7 open roles · median 162 d
How we counted: 107 open Software Engineering Semiconductor (AI EDA Design) roles from 31 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 16 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 Software, Firmware & Systems family row. Figures refresh nightly.