Applications Engineering, Sr Staff Engineer

Job Description and Requirements

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 have spent years becoming the person design teams call when a chip is three weeks from tape-out and timing closure is still out of reach. You know PrimeTime not just as a tool but as a problem-solving environment, and you have learned that the difference between a customer who adopts a new feature and one who ignores it comes down to whether you can show them why it matters for their specific corner case on their specific design.

You are comfortable sitting with a customer's STA engineer debugging a cryptic timing violation at 9 AM and then walking R&D through why that same issue represents a product gap worth prioritizing by 3 PM. You do not need a perfect runbook to be effective. You ask the right questions, reproduce the issue, and find a path forward even when the answer is not in the documentation yet.

You have built credibility by showing up prepared, following through, and knowing when to escalate. Customers trust you because you understand their pressure and their design constraints, not just the tool syntax. At Synopsys, you will work on sign-off tools that determine whether billion-dollar chips actually work, and the customers you support will remember the difference you made.

What You'll Be Doing

• Support customer tape-outs using PrimeTime, PrimeShield, PrimeClosure, and PrimePower, working directly with design teams to resolve timing, power, and sign-off issues under tight schedules
• Drive adoption of newly developed features by running beta programs, building proof-of-concept flows, and translating technical capabilities into customer value
• Debug complex customer designs, reproduce issues in-house, and work with R&D and product engineering to deliver solutions or workarounds
• Capture customer requirements from real design challenges and propose product enhancements that improve sign-off accuracy, performance, or usability
• Create and deliver technical training sessions, presentations, and demos tailored to customer design flows and tool usage patterns
• Collaborate with local and global applications engineering teams to share knowledge, escalate technical issues, and align on best practices
• Review product documentation and contribute feedback to ensure accuracy and relevance for customer-facing scenarios

The Impact You Will Have

• Enable successful tape-outs for customers building leading-edge semiconductor designs by resolving critical sign-off bottlenecks
• Accelerate customer adoption of new PrimeTime suite capabilities, directly influencing product usage and customer satisfaction
• Shape future product direction by translating real-world design challenges into actionable R&D requirements
• Build long-term customer relationships rooted in technical credibility and responsiveness during high-stakes project phases
• Reduce time-to-resolution for complex sign-off issues by bridging the gap between customer environments and internal engineering teams
• Improve the quality and usability of Synopsys sign-off tools through hands-on beta testing and detailed feedback loops
• Strengthen the technical capability of customer teams through training and knowledge transfer that sticks beyond the initial engagement

What You'll Need

• 8+ years of hands-on experience in semiconductor design, with deep expertise in static timing analysis, power analysis, or physical design sign-off
• Strong working knowledge of PrimeTime, experience with PrimeShield, PrimeClosure, or PrimePower is a significant plus
• Proven ability to debug timing and power issues in complex SoC or ASIC designs, ideally in a customer-facing or applications engineering role
• Solid scripting skills in Tcl, Python, or Perl for automation, flow development, and issue reproduction
• Experience working directly with customers in a technical support, field applications, or consulting capacity
• Ability to communicate complex technical tradeoffs clearly to both customer engineers and internal R&D teams
• Willingness to travel occasionally to customer sites for onsite support, training, or escalations

Who You Are

• You can walk into a customer war room during a tape-out crunch and quickly assess what is actually blocking them versus what is noise
• You do not wait for someone else to write the demo or the training deck, you build it yourself because you know what the customer needs to see
• You are comfortable saying "I do not know yet, but I will find out" and then actually following through with an answer
• You can explain why a new PrimeTime feature matters in two sentences to a skeptical customer engineer who has seen ten tool updates this quarter
• You stay organized across multiple customer engagements, beta programs, and R&D threads without dropping details or losing context
• You push back when a product enhancement request is too vague or when a customer expectation does not match tool capability, and you do it in a way that maintains trust

The Team You'll Be Part Of

Your recruiter will share more about the team structure and mission during the interview process.

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.

At Synopsys, we want talented people of every background to feel valued and supported to do their best work. Synopsys considers all applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, military veteran status, or disability.