Physical Design Applications Engineer
Synopsys — Hyderabad, Telangana
₹3–7 LPA (HireSetu estimate) · 0–2 yrs exp · Freshers eligible · Full-time
HireSetu listing reference a1206d — confirm requirements below, then apply on the employer site.
Quick answer: You support customers running Synopsys place and route tools, so the core skill is reproducing and explaining their failures, not owning a block of your own. Freshers with a solid RTL2GDS project and scripting in Tcl or Perl can compete here.
From Synopsys's job posting
Alternate Job Titles
- Physical Design Application Engineer
- Physical Design Support Engineer
- ASIC Application Engineer
- Digital Implementation Application Engineer
We Are
Synopsys is the leader in engineering solutions from silicon to systems, enabling customers to rapidly innovate AI-powered products. We deliver industry-leading silicon design, IP, simulation and analysis solutions, and design services. We partner closely with our customers across a wide range of industries to maximize their R&D capability and productivity, powering innovation today that ignites the ingenuity of tomorrow.
You Are
You are someone who gets energized solving customer problems in physical design, whether through coursework, internships, or early projects. You have spent enough time in RTL2GDS flows to know that when a PnR implementation stalls, the answer is usually hiding in a script, a constraint, or a methodology assumption nobody questioned. You do not just close tickets, you reproduce the issue, fix it, and explain what went wrong in a way that makes the customer better at their job.
Working directly with customers does not intimidate you. You listen to what they are asking, figure out what they actually need, and move quickly between debugging in the morning and training their team in the afternoon. At Synopsys, you will work with customers building the chips that power everything, and what you help them solve actually matters.
What You'll Be Doing
- Troubleshoot and resolve complex physical design issues on customer installations, working through RTL2GDS flows including place and route, timing closure, and signoff.
- Deploy new product releases and train customer teams on implementations, features, and best practices that improve their design outcomes.
- Partner directly with R&D teams to escalate bugs, validate fixes, and contribute to the technical roadmap based on real customer feedback.
- Build and maintain scripts in Tcl, Perl, or Unix shell to automate workflows, reproduce issues, and improve customer productivity.
- Represent Synopsys on customer calls, design reviews, and technical discussions, acting as the bridge between their needs and our product capabilities.
The Impact You Will Have
- Customers hit fewer roadblocks and close timing faster because you helped them debug their flow and tune their methodology.
- Product quality improves because the issues you escalate to R&D are clear, reproducible, and tied to real customer use cases.
- Adoption increases on key accounts because you showed teams how to use new features in ways that solve their actual problems.
- Customer retention stays strong because technical managers trust you to show up, understand their environment, and deliver answers that work.
- R&D builds better tools because you bring field insight that shapes specs, validation, and priorities.
What You'll Need
- Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Electronics Engineering, or Computer Engineering.
- 0-2 years of hands-on industry experience in physical design with exposure to RTL2GDS flows, PnR tools, digital circuits, CMOS fundamentals, and ASIC design methodology. (internships, projects, and relevant coursework included).
- Experience independently debugging and resolving place and route implementation challenges.
- Proficiency in scripting using Tcl, Perl, or Unix shell to automate tasks and troubleshoot workflows.
- Strong communication skills and comfort working directly with customers, both remotely and in technical discussions.
Who You Are
- You can take a vague customer complaint, ask the right questions, reproduce the issue in your own environment, and walk them through what actually happened.
- You do not wait for perfect information to move, you work with what you have, fill in gaps as you go, and keep the customer informed along the way.
- You are organized enough to manage multiple customer cases at once without dropping threads or losing context.
- You genuinely enjoy explaining technical concepts, whether that is walking a new user through a flow or showing an experienced engineer a better way to approach timing closure.
The Team You'll Be Part Of
You will join the Synopsys Applications Engineering team in Hyderabad, supporting customers globally on semiconductor design challenges. The team collaborates closely with R&D to influence product direction, partners with Sales to win and grow accounts, and works directly with customer technical teams to deploy solutions, resolve complex implementation issues, and drive adoption of Synopsys tools on critical projects. You will be part of a technical community that values problem solving, customer impact, and continuous learning.
Rewards and Benefits
We offer a comprehensive range of health, wellness, and financial benefits to cater to your needs. Our total rewards include both monetary and non-monetary offerings. Your recruiter will provide more details about the salary range and benefits during the hiring process.
Text from Synopsys's official job posting, formatted by HireSetu. The employer's own page is the final word on details.
HireSetu's note
Debugging other people's flows
When a customer's place and route run stalls, you take their scripts, constraints and logs, rebuild the case in your own environment, and find the assumption that broke. The bar is independent PnR debugging, so nobody hands you a narrowed-down bug. Plenty of the day goes into reading reports and constraints rather than clicking through a GUI. If your physical design experience is a lab flow you followed step by step, this will feel like a jump.
Scripting is half the work
Tcl, Perl or Unix shell, used to reproduce failures, automate customer workflows and tidy up reports. Anyone comfortable in a Linux shell who can write Tcl without checking the syntax on every line starts ahead. Build the habit on a college project: script a run end to end, capture the log, pull out the lines that matter.
Fundamentals to revise
Timing closure, congestion, placement and routing stages, CTS, DRC and LVS signoff, ECOs. You should be able to say why a design misses timing after routing and what you would change. CMOS and digital circuit basics come up too, because customer questions drift into cell behaviour and library choices.
The path from here
Applications engineers sit between the tool vendor and the teams using the tools: visibility across many chips instead of ownership of one block. That breadth is the appeal. The trade is customer calls, escalations and meetings that set your day. Moves into product engineering, R&D or a physical design team at a chip company are ordinary after a couple of years.
The Hyderabad team supports customers globally, so calls outside Indian hours are likely. Getting the pre-sales and post-sales split clear early helps, since it decides how much of your week is demos and how much is firefighting.
Drafted with AI from Synopsys's job posting and checked by Prashanth Jakkula before publishing. See our Editorial Policy.
How to apply
- Open Synopsys's careers site with the Apply button.
- Follow the application steps on the site and upload your resume.
- Keep the confirmation email or application number for follow-up.
No fees, ever. HireSetu never charges candidates, and no genuine employer asks for money to apply, interview or join. If anyone asks you to pay, stop and report the job.
Similar openings on HireSetu
- Physical Design Engineer, Associate at Qualcomm — Hyderabad — VLSI · Full-time
- Physical Design Engineer at Qualcomm — Bangalore — VLSI · Full-time
- Engineer — ASIC Physical Design at Arm — Bengaluru — VLSI · Full-time
- DFX RTL Design Engineer at AMD — Hyderabad — VLSI · Full-time
- ENGINEER, SIG ELECTRICAL DESIGN at Micron — Hyderabad — VLSI · Full-time
View Physical Design Applications Engineer on HireSetu · VLSI jobs · Jobs in Hyderabad · Career Insights · FAQ · Companies