Job Description
Sr Staff / Principal Physical Verification Engineer
As a Sr Staff / Principal Physical Verification Engineer, you will be the technical owner of all signoff physical verification activities across advanced process nodes. You will lead DRC, LVS, and DFM sign-off at chip top level, drive hierarchical verification strategies, and own bump planning and package-level DRC across Intel, TSMC, Samsung, and GlobalFoundries technologies spanning 28nm through 2nm. You will be a partner with physical design, package engineering, and foundry teams to ensure first-pass tape out success on chiplet-based products.
Key Responsibilities
- Own end-to-end physical verification signoff strategy from block level through chip top, ensuring all DRC, LVS, ERC, and antenna violations are cleanly resolved before tapeout.
- Define and execute hierarchical DRC methodology across multiple abstraction levels (block, partition, top), leveraging Calibre or IC Validator in hierarchical and distributed modes.
- Drive full-chip DRC convergence across advanced nodes including 28nm, 22nm, 14nm, 7nm, 5nm, 3nm, and 2nm at Intel, TSMC, Samsung, and GlobalFoundries.
- Develop waiver management processes with foundry sign-off teams; distinguish hard violations from soft DFM advisories and document justifications for each waiver class.
- Collaborate with physical design teams on real-time DRC closure, guiding routing rules, spacing constraints, and metal fill strategies to minimize violations upstream.
- Lead bump planning for flip-chip and 2.5D/3D chiplet assemblies — define bump array configuration, pitch, UBM sizing, and RDL routing to satisfy both electrical and mechanical requirements.
- Execute top-level bump DRC checks including bump pitch, clearance, RDL spacing, keep-out zones, and passivation opening rules per foundry and OSAT PDK requirements.
- Validate bump-to-bump, bump-to-signal, and bump-to-power domain spacing across multiple power domains and IO ring configurations.
- Collaborate with package and substrate teams on co-design constraints to align die-side bump map with package-side ball grid array (BGA) and interposer routing.
- Ensure compliance with electromigration (EM) limits on bump current density and perform IR-drop correlation between die and package.
- Develop and maintain Calibre SVRF/TVF and IC Validator runsets customized per foundry PDK, managing layer name mappings, derived layers, and rule deck versioning.
- Implement incremental and cell-level DRC methodologies to accelerate design iteration turnaround — reducing full-chip DRC runtime by leveraging hierarchical cell reuse.
- Drive LVS signoff at all levels of the design hierarchy, establishing schematic-vs-layout equivalence across mixed-signal, standard cell, memory, and custom analog blocks.
- Own ERC (Electrical Rules Check) signoff including antenna, floating gate, and latch-up checks across full-chip context.
- Lead DFM signoff including critical area analysis (CAA), CMP density checks, and foundry-required DFM rule checks — prioritize and resolve critical violations before tapeout.
- Build and maintain robust PV automation infrastructure using Python, Perl, and Tcl — automate runset selection, job dispatch, result parsing, and signoff reporting.
- Present PV status, waiver summaries, and signoff readiness reports to executive leadership and foundry partners at tapeout reviews.
Minimum Qualifications
- 15+ years of ASIC physical verification experience with a proven track record of leading tapeouts at advanced nodes.
- Deep multi-foundry expertise across two or more of: Intel Foundry (18A/20A), TSMC (N2–N7), Samsung (SF3–SF5), GlobalFoundries (GF12/GF22).
- Multi-node experience spanning 28nm through 2nm, with strong knowledge of how DRC rule complexity evolves across nodes.
- Proven expertise in bump planning and package-level DRC for flip-chip, CoWoS, EMIB, Foveros, technologies.
- Experience with advanced packaging co-design flows integrating die-level GDSII with package substrate databases.
- Strong understanding of DFM concepts: critical area, CMP density, RDL reliability, and litho-aware design.
- Experience building and maintaining DRC regression infrastructure with automated trending and signoff dashboards.
- Familiarity with 2.5D/3D chiplet integration challenges — die-to-die connectivity DRC, TSV keep-out, and heterogeneous integration rule decks.
- Excellent communication and cross-functional collaboration skills — ability to work with design, package, and foundry teams simultaneously.
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