Eda / Cad Engineering
EDA / CAD Engineers for ASIC Programs
A good CAD team makes every designer more productive. A bad one delays tape-out. We staff the people who build and maintain the flow.
What they do
Flow, Methodology, and Tool Infrastructure
CAD engineers at Game 7 maintain the end-to-end flow. Debugging synthesis runs, updating Calibre runsets for new DRC decks, writing Python scripts that parse timing reports, and managing tool licenses so engineers don't hit checkout bottlenecks.
The best CAD engineers bring methodology expertise: constraint quality, synthesis strategy for low-power designs, multi-patterning flow recommendations. They raise the productivity of every engineer on the team.
Scope of work
- Design flow development and maintenance: RTL-to-GDS automation from synthesis through physical verification
- EDA tool installation, qualification, and regression infrastructure management
- Timing constraint (SDC) methodology development and constraint quality checking scripts
- LSF/SLURM compute farm administration and EDA license management (FlexLM, RLM)
- Physical design methodology: standard cell library characterization and PDK bring-up
- Python and Tcl scripting for EDA tool automation, result parsing, and custom reporting
- ML-driven EDA optimization: integration of ML-based placement, routing, and timing prediction tools
- Design data infrastructure: NFS/GPFS storage management and Perforce/Git version control for design data
Tools & Technologies
The stack our EDA / CAD engineers actually ship in.
Program context
A Good CAD Team Makes Every Designer More Productive
The EDA/CAD engineer is the invisible infrastructure layer of every chip design program. When the flow runs cleanly. Synthesis completes overnight, timing reports parse correctly, Calibre runs finish without crashing. Designers can focus on design. When the flow breaks, the CAD engineer diagnoses the issue, patches the script, correlates the failure to a tool version, and gets the run restarted. At startups and contract programs, a single senior CAD engineer can be the difference between a smooth tape-out and a program that misses its window.
FAQ
Common Questions on Eda / Cad Engineering Staffing
What does an EDA/CAD engineer actually do day-to-day?+
They maintain and improve the design flow. The end-to-end automation that takes RTL in and produces a tape-out-ready GDSII out. Practically: debugging synthesis runs that fail on specific cells or timing paths, updating Calibre runsets when the foundry releases a new DRC ruleset, writing Python scripts that parse 10,000 timing paths and flag the top 100 violators, managing tool licenses so 200 engineers do not hit the same license checkout bottleneck, and setting up the compute farm so a 48-hour simulation run finishes in 8 hours with proper resource allocation.
What's the difference between a CAD engineer and a methodology engineer?+
These titles overlap but have a useful distinction. A CAD engineer typically owns the tool infrastructure and flow automation. The scripts, the compute environment, the day-to-day operations. A methodology engineer focuses on best practices and reference flows. How should timing constraints be written, what is the recommended synthesis strategy for low-power designs, how should multi-patterning be handled in the P&R flow. At larger companies, both roles exist and are separate. At smaller companies or startups, one engineer often does both.
Can Game 7 place EDA engineers for PDK bring-up specifically?+
Yes. Bringing up a new foundry PDK. Verifying that the design kit, DRC rules, LVS rules, timing libraries, and parasitic extraction models are correctly integrated into the design flow. Is a specialized task at the intersection of foundry process knowledge and EDA tooling. Engineers who have done PDK bring-up have worked directly with foundry PDK teams, debugged cell library characterization issues, and correlated tool-computed parasitics to foundry measurements.
How important is ML/AI tooling becoming in EDA flows?+
Significantly. Synopsys, Cadence, and Siemens all have ML-driven optimization modules: PrimeTime ML (timing prediction), Synopsys DSO.ai (autonomous placement optimization), and Cadence Cerebrus (ML-driven PD flow optimization). CAD engineers who understand how to integrate these tools into production flows, tune the ML models on their specific design style, and evaluate when the ML optimization is helping versus adding runtime are increasingly valuable. Open-source EDA efforts (OpenROAD, OpenLane) and academic ML-for-EDA research are also active.
Related disciplines
Cross-Links Across the Team
Floorplan, P&R, STA, and Signoff Engineers for Advanced Process Nodes
PD engineers who depend on the flow the CAD team maintains.
RTL Design Engineers →SystemVerilog RTL Designers with Tape-Out Experience
Front-end engineers whose synthesis and lint runs the CAD flow executes.
DFT Engineers →Design for Test Engineers with Chip-Level DFT Ownership Experience
DFT flows are among the most complex CAD-maintained infrastructure.
Let's talk
Need an EDA / CAD Engineer?
Tell us the program. We'll send a shortlist of 2-4 qualified engineers within days.