Principal CPU Design Engineer

About the role

You will serve as a principal design engineer at a semiconductor company, the technical authority for CPU logic design across programs and teams. Principal designers define how the organization designs processors: the coding standards, the microarchitecture review process, the timing closure methodology, and the quality bars that every block must meet. Your judgment determines whether designs are clean, timing closes predictably, and tapeouts happen on schedule, and your mentorship shapes the designers who will carry the organization forward.

What you will achieve

• Set the design methodology and quality standards for CPU logic design across the organization, including coding guidelines, review processes, check flows, and sign-off criteria that every program follows.
• Lead the microarchitecture and design reviews for the most critical CPU blocks, catching structural problems early when they are cheap to fix rather than late when they threaten the schedule.
• Drive timing closure strategy for high-frequency CPU programs, establishing the pipeline planning, margin policies, and physical-design collaboration model that delivers predictable results.
• Resolve the most difficult design challenges in the organization, from novel microarchitectural structures to seemingly impossible timing paths, through deep technical insight and creative problem solving.
• Mentor senior and staff designers deliberately, building the next generation of technical leaders and multiplying your impact across the organization.
• Advise executive leadership on design risk, schedule realism, and technology decisions, providing honest assessments grounded in deep implementation experience.

What you will bring

Must-haves

• 12 or more years of experience in CPU logic design with multiple generations of shipped high-performance processors.
• Demonstrated ability to set technical direction for design organizations of significant size, with methodology adopted across programs.
• Mastery of RTL design, microarchitecture, timing closure, physical design interaction, and silicon debug.
• Track record of delivering complex designs on aggressive schedules without compromising quality.
• Exceptional code review and design review skills: you see structural problems others miss and explain them constructively.
• Strong communication skills for influencing designers, architects, managers, and executives.
• A record of developing other designers into technical leaders.

Nice-to-haves

• Experience across multiple ISAs or market segments including client, server, and mobile.
• Knowledge of advanced process node design challenges and their implications for logic design.
• Patents or publications in processor design or design methodology.