Custom CPU Logic Designer

About the role

You will design custom logic for specialized CPU features at a semiconductor company, implementing the unique structures that differentiate the product from competitors. Custom logic designers create what does not exist yet: novel datapath structures, specialized accelerators, unconventional control schemes, and customer-specific extensions that standard design approaches cannot deliver efficiently. You will thrive on variety and inventive problem solving, moving between different design challenges and crafting structures optimized well beyond what generic synthesis flows produce.

What you will achieve

• Design and implement custom logic blocks for specialized CPU features, from novel datapath structures to customer-specific accelerators, meeting functional, timing, power, and area targets on schedule.
• Invent creative microarchitectural solutions for unique requirements, evaluating alternatives quantitatively and selecting approaches that balance genuine innovation with manageable implementation risk.
• Optimize custom structures aggressively for PPA, exploiting the freedom of custom design to beat what standard-cell synthesis alone can achieve on critical paths and power budgets.
• Verify custom logic thoroughly including the unusual corner cases that novel structures introduce, reaching the quality bars required for confident integration into the larger design.
• Document custom designs exceptionally well, since novel structures demand clearer explanation than conventional logic for the verification, physical design, and future maintenance teams who must understand them.
• Support integration, system verification, and silicon validation of custom features, ensuring they deliver their intended product differentiation in the final shipped product.

What you will bring

Must-haves

• 2 to 5 years of experience in digital logic design with exposure to datapath, accelerator, or specialized block design.
• Strong SystemVerilog skills with creativity in structuring logic for performance, power, and area beyond textbook approaches.
• Good understanding of computer arithmetic, datapath design fundamentals, and control logic design.
• Experience with synthesis-driven optimization, timing constraints, and timing closure.
• Verification skills appropriate for novel logic with unusual corner cases that standard test plans might miss.
• Inventiveness balanced with pragmatism: you explore creative solutions enthusiastically but commit to what can be built reliably on schedule.
• Clear technical communication for explaining novel designs to verification, physical design, and software audiences.

Nice-to-haves

• Experience with custom circuit design, datapath compilers, or structured datapath flows.
• Knowledge of domain-specific acceleration for AI, cryptography, networking, or signal processing.
• Background in customer-specific silicon programs with direct customer interaction.
• Familiarity with formal methods for verifying unconventional logic structures.