Principal Design Engineer – RTL Design & Integration

About Celestial AI

As Generative AI continues to advance, the performance drivers for data center infrastructure are shifting from systems-on-chip (SOCs) to systems of chips. In the era of Accelerated Computing, data center bottlenecks are no longer limited to compute performance, but rather the system’s interconnect bandwidth, memory bandwidth, and memory capacity. Celestial AI’s Photonic Fabric™ is the next-generation interconnect technology that delivers a tenfold increase in performance and energy efficiency compared to competing solutions.

The Photonic Fabric™ is available to our customers in multiple technology offerings, including optical interface chiplets, optical interposers, and Optical Multi-chip Interconnect Bridges (OMIB). This allows customers to easily incorporate high bandwidth, low power, and low latency optical interfaces into their AI accelerators and GPUs. The technology is fully compatible with both protocol and physical layers, including standard 2.5D packaging processes. This seamless integration enables XPUs to utilize optical interconnects for both compute-to-compute and compute-to-memory fabrics, achieving bandwidths in the tens of terabits per second with nanosecond latencies.

This innovation empowers hyperscalers to enhance the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of AI processing by optimizing the XPUs required for training and inference, while significantly reducing the TCO2 impact. To bolster customer collaborations, Celestial AI is developing a Photonic Fabric ecosystem consisting of tier-1 partnerships that include custom silicon/ASIC design, system integrators, HBM memory, assembly, and packaging suppliers.

ABOUT THE ROLE

As a Principal Design Engineer, you will play a key role in defining and integrating architectures for Celestial AI's IP and SOCs, focusing on high-speed interfaces and chip interconnect solutions. You will collaborate closely with system architects, RTL designers, and verification teams to develop high-performance SoC designs. This role requires deep expertise in RTL design, integration, and memory subsystem architectures.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Architect, design, and integrate high-performance SoC components, including high-speed memory interfaces (e.g., DDR, HBM) and chip interconnects (e.g., AXI, NoC, UCIe, CXL, PCIe).
• Develop and implement complex RTL designs using SystemVerilog, ensuring scalability, power efficiency, and reusability.
• Lead SoC-level integration efforts, working closely with cross-functional teams on design specifications, IP integration, and performance optimization.
• Define synthesis constraints for modules and SOC and collaborate with Synthesis and Physical Design teams. 
• Author detailed design specifications and documentation for SoC modules and subsystems.
• Collaborate with verification engineers to define test strategies, drive coverage closure, and ensure functional correctness.
• Optimize for power, performance, and area (PPA) by evaluating tradeoffs at both module and SoC levels.
• Perform static and dynamic analysis using industry-standard tools (Lint, CDC, STA, and LEC) to ensure high-quality designs.
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship to junior engineers and cross-functional teams.

QUALIFICATIONS

• MS or PhD in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field preferred.
• 8+ years of experience in SoC design, RTL development, and integration.
• Expertise in RTL design using SystemVerilog
• Strong understanding of high-speed memory interfaces (e.g., DDR, HBM) and chip-to-chip interconnects (e.g., AXI, UCIe, PCIe, CXL).
• Strong knowledge of RTL verification and validation methodologies, including Lint, CDC, STA, and LEC.
• Experience with low-power design techniques, including clock gating, power gating, and voltage scaling.
• Deep understanding of SoC architecture, including multi-core processing, coherency protocols, and subsystem integration.
• Proficiency with SoC design tools, including simulation, synthesis, timing analysis, and power estimation.
• Working knowledge of formal verification methodologies (SVA, UVM).
• Experience with scripting languages (Python, Perl, TCL) for design automation.

LOCATION: Orange County, CA

For California Location:

As an early stage start up, we offer an extremely attractive total compensation package inclusive of competitive base salary, bonus and a generous grant of our valuable early-stage equity. The target base salary for this role is approximately $200,000.00 - $240,000.00. The base salary offered may be slightly higher or lower than the target base salary, based on the final scope as determined by the depth of the experience and skills demonstrated by candidate in the interviews.

We offer great benefits (health, vision, dental and life insurance), collaborative and continuous learning work environment, where you will get a chance to work with smart and dedicated people engaged in developing the next generation architecture for high performance computing.

Celestial AI Inc. is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer.

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