Full Job Description
ROLE DESCRIPTION
WaveWorks designs wireless endpoint chips whose power budget is measured in nanoamps. The Analog Design Engineer designs, simulates and verifies the analog and mixed-signal blocks of these chips, where every block is judged first by the current it draws. The work sits on the company's current architectural charter: reducing active and sleep power far below what conventional radios achieve, while keeping range and reliability.
This is a hands-on individual-contributor role on a small silicon team. The engineer owns blocks from specification through tapeout and silicon bring-up, and works closely with digital design, verification, and system architecture.
• Design ultra-low-power analog and mixed-signal blocks: bias and reference generation, low-dropout regulators and power switches, oscillators and PLLs, and control loops.
• Design at nanoamp bias currents and low signal levels, managing leakage, noise, offset and mismatch across process, voltage and temperature.
• Define power domains and power-management behavior for always-on, duty-cycled operation, with an energy budget for each block.
• Build SystemVerilog and Verilog-AMS behavioral models of analog blocks, and run block-level and chip-level mixed-signal simulation with the digital design.
• Drive layout for low leakage and matching, and review parasitic-extracted results.
• Characterize silicon in the lab, correlate measurements with simulation, and feed results into the next revision.
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS
• BS in Electrical Engineering plus 5 or more years of analog IC design experience, MS plus 3 or more years, or a PhD degree.
• Proven record of taking analog blocks through tapeout in a CMOS process, and bringing them up on silicon.
• Fluency with Cadence Virtuoso and Spectre, or equivalent tools, including corner and Monte Carlo analysis.
• Mixed-signal (AMS) design and verification experience, including SystemVerilog and Verilog-AMS or real-number models for block-level and chip-level simulation.
• Strong command of subthreshold design, leakage, noise, and mismatch.
• Ability to write clear block specifications and work across analog, digital and verification teams.
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
• Power management for very low power IoT or wearable devices.
• Low-power RF or wireless transceiver design, including PLLs, oscillators, and wake-up receivers.
• Energy harvesting, intermittent power, or battery-free system design.
• Advanced-node CMOS design for low leakage.
• Experience at an early-stage company, owning several blocks at once.
WaveWorks is located in downtown Seattle, Washington.