ROLE DESCRIPTION
WaveWorks is looking for a strong software and systems engineer to own the engineering environment its silicon team depends on. That environment is built on the Synopsys, Cadence and Siemens EDA tool suites, alongside other EDA and lab tools. The role covers the software, compute, EDA, data and automation infrastructure behind chip design, bring-up, characterization and test. The goal is an engineering environment that runs like a mature production system: reliable, reproducible and able to scale, with tooling and infrastructure work taken off the IC designers.
The right person will be given authority to direct information and IT infrastructure for a complex, deep-stack technology startup building a multi-faceted platform.
This is not a chip design role and not corporate IT. The engineer is the technical owner of the systems that let analog, digital and verification designers do their jobs, and the software generalist the silicon team turns to when a new need appears. EDA tools are the first priority, but the scope is deliberately broad.
EDA ENVIRONMENT
- Install, configure and maintain the Synopsys, Cadence and Siemens EDA tool suites, their license servers, and other EDA tools, and make them work together reliably in one design environment.
- Own the knowledge of how the design environment is assembled, and document it so that it does not depend on any one designer.
- Open and track support tickets, reproduce and report failures, coordinate work with vendors, and drive issues to closure.
COMPUTE AND ENGINEERING INFRASTRUCTURE
- Run engineering workstations, compute servers, shared storage, and access control.
- Build reproducible development environments, software deployment, and automation, including CI-style workflows around design and test.
TEST AND CHARACTERIZATION SOFTWARE
- Build bench-test automation and instrument-control software for silicon bring-up and characterization.
- Build the pipeline for test data: acquisition, experiment metadata, parsing, storage, statistical analysis, plotting and reports.
- Build regression and automated test suites, and tools to compare results across devices, lots, temperatures, configurations and silicon revisions.
ENGINEERING DATA
- Organize design files, test data, generated artifacts and technical documentation so they are stored predictably, versioned, searchable, tagged with metadata, and available to the right people.
- Own version control across engineering: Git for software, scripts and configuration, and design data management for design libraries and PDKs, with branching, release and access practices the whole team follows.
- Structure engineering data so later analysis and automation are possible.
INTERNAL SOFTWARE
- Write the internal tools, scripts, data pipelines, hardware-control software and build tooling that the silicon team needs, including one-off software to unblock a hardware engineer.
- Use AI coding agents and modern tools as a standard part of the work, to build internal software quickly and remove recurring manual overhead.
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS
- BS in Electrical Engineering or a closely related field plus 3 or more years of software or systems engineering experience, or an MS plus 1 or more years.
- Strong software engineering in Python and at least one other language, with a record of building and maintaining tools other engineers rely on.
- Expert use of Git and version-control workflows, including repository administration.
- Deep Linux systems administration: servers, storage, networking, user and access management, and scripting.
- DevOps practice: configuration management, reproducible environments, containers, CI, and automation of repetitive work.
- Daily, effective use of AI coding agents and assistants in engineering work.
- High autonomy and breadth: able to take ownership of an undefined problem, such as a new test suite, and deliver it without close direction.
- Enjoys building critical infrastructure and wants to own it.
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
- Experience administering Synopsys, Cadence or Siemens EDA tools, including license servers and design-environment setup.
- Familiarity with IC design flows, PDKs, and design data management.
- Lab automation and instrument control for semiconductor bring-up or characterization.
- Data engineering and statistical analysis of large test data sets.
- Experience working with EDA or other technical vendors on support and escalation.
- Firmware or embedded software experience.
- Experience at a semiconductor or hardware startup.
WaveWorks is located in downtown Seattle, Washington.
