Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Manager – Silicon Design Engineering

🎯 Role Definition

We are seeking an experienced Manager – Silicon Design Engineering to lead multi-disciplinary teams responsible for ASIC/SoC RTL development, verification, DFT, synthesis, place-and-route and silicon bring-up. The role owns delivery across the full silicon lifecycle — architecture collaboration, micro-architecture tradeoffs, verification strategy and execution, PPA targets, tapeout coordination, and post-silicon debug — while scaling a high-performing design organization through hiring, mentoring and process modernization.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Senior Staff ASIC/SoC Design Engineer
Lead Verification Engineer / Verification Architect
Senior Physical Design / Timing Closure Engineer

Advancement To:

Director of Silicon Engineering
VP of Hardware/SoC Engineering
Head of Silicon Architecture & Delivery

Lateral Moves:

Product / Platform Engineering Lead
Systems Architecture or Firmware Leadership
Technical Program Management for Silicon Platforms

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Lead and manage a cross-functional silicon design engineering team (RTL, verification, DFT, synthesis, PNR, STA) to deliver high-quality ASIC/SoC products on schedule and within budget, with accountability for headcount, performance reviews and career development.
Define and drive the RTL and verification strategy for multiple SoC blocks and subsystems, setting coding standards, linting and continuous-integration flows to ensure consistent, high-quality RTL across projects.
Own verification strategy creation and execution: develop comprehensive simulation, emulation, formal verification and UVM-based testbench plans to achieve signoff-level coverage and reduce functional risk prior to tapeout.
Set and optimize PPA (performance, power, area) targets in collaboration with architecture and physical design leads; drive microarchitecture tradeoffs, pipelining, clocking and low-power techniques (clock-gating, power domains, power-state machines) to meet product goals.
Manage timing-closure activities in partnership with physical design and STA teams: define timing constraints, oversee synthesis scripts, guide floorplanning, and arbitrate tradeoffs during placement and routing to ensure timing signoff.
Oversee DFT architecture and implementation (scan, BIST, compression, ATPG) to achieve manufacturing testability and high test coverage; coordinate with test engineers and foundry partners to validate ATE flows and patterns.
Coordinate tapeout planning and execution: develop tapeout checklists, manage IP sign-off, oversee ECO flows, and ensure all design-for-manufacturability and signoff criteria are met before submission.
Drive IP selection, qualification, and integration: evaluate third-party and internal IP, manage licensing and version control, and establish reuse libraries and abstraction layers to accelerate time-to-market.
Lead post-silicon bring-up, debug and root-cause analysis: coordinate lab debugging, JTAG/scan analysis, failure analysis with test, platform, firmware and systems teams to isolate silicon issues and drive silicon fixes/ECOs.
Implement continuous improvement of design flows and toolchains: evaluate and deploy EDA tools (Synopsys, Cadence, Mentor) and automation (Tcl, Python, Makefiles, CI) to improve cycle time, regression throughput and reproducibility.
Establish and enforce rigorous design and verification processes (design reviews, code reviews, signoff gates, quality metrics) and run regular design-for-quality audits to minimize re-spins and post-silicon escapes.
Collaborate with architecture, firmware, systems and product management to translate system requirements into implementable RTL/verification plans and realistic delivery roadmaps, balancing scope, schedule and risk.
Define measurable KPIs for the team (regression pass rates, bug escape rates, coverage progress, tapeout milestones) and report status to senior leadership, proactively mitigating risks and escalating issues when necessary.
Mentor and coach engineers across competency levels; create individual development plans, run hiring and onboarding processes, and cultivate a culture of technical excellence, ownership and continuous learning.
Drive cross-site and cross-functional coordination with foundry, packaging, test, manufacturing and external partners to align schedule, qualification plans and yield-improvement activities.
Plan and manage budgets, resource allocation and contractor/vendor relationships for design projects, ensuring appropriate investments into tooling, IP and lab infrastructure.
Lead security, safety and compliance efforts in silicon design where applicable (secure boot, hardware root-of-trust, export controls and IP licensing compliance).
Advocate and implement low-power and variability-aware design methodologies, including multi-voltage flows, body-bias strategies and power intent (UPF/CPF) integration across RTL-to-PNR flows.
Drive formal verification initiatives and static analysis to catch architectural and RTL-level issues early, partnering with verification leads to close functional and security-critical gaps.
Oversee FPGA prototyping and hardware-software co-verification efforts to enable early firmware bring-up, performance validation and customer demos prior to silicon availability.
Participate in architectural trade studies and product definition sessions to evaluate feasibility, cost, PPA and schedule impacts of new features and interfaces (PCIe, Ethernet, USB, DDR, LPDDR).
Lead root cause investigations into post-silicon yield, reliability, or field failures and coordinate corrective actions including ECOs, redesigns or process changes in close collaboration with manufacturing and failure analysis teams.
Sponsor and drive IP and design reuse programs to reduce engineering effort across product lines, maintain consistent verification backbones and streamline integration processes.
Ensure robust configuration management and version control practices (Git, Perforce) across RTL, testbenches and scripts; implement branching models and release gating to reduce integration risk.
Serve as technical liaison to customers and system partners for silicon integration, qualification requirements, and silicon/board bring-up support during alpha/beta phases.

Secondary Functions

Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.
Coordinate with supply-chain and procurement teams to secure prototypes, test equipment and board-level components for bring-up and debug.
Prepare and present technical status, post-mortems and lessons-learned documents to leadership and cross-functional stakeholders after each tapeout or major milestone.
Drive documentation standards for design specification, verification plans, lab test plans and post-silicon reports to ensure traceability and knowledge transfer.
Advocate for diversity, inclusion and professional development initiatives within the engineering organization.
Support patent filings, prior-art searches and IP protection activities related to novel micro-architecture or circuit techniques developed by the team.
Participate in technical hiring events, university outreach and internship programs to build long-term talent pipelines.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Deep hands-on experience with RTL design and code review using SystemVerilog, Verilog and VHDL; strong understanding of synthesizable coding best practices.
Verification methodology expertise: UVM, SystemVerilog assertions (SVA), constrained-random verification, scoreboarding and coverage closure strategies.
Strong background in STA, timing-closure methodologies, synthesis flows and familiarity with P&R tools (Synopsys ICC2/IC Compiler, Cadence Innovus, Mentor Olympus).
DFT and test expertise: scan insertion, ATPG flows, BIST, compression, boundary-scan and manufacturing test collaboration.
Power-aware design and low-power techniques including UPF/CPF, clock gating, power domain partitioning and power intent verification.
Familiarity with FPGA prototyping platforms and emulation solutions (Veloce, Zebu, prototyping boards) for early hardware/software validation.
Experience with physical design constraints, floorplanning, clock-tree synthesis, placement and routing trade-offs to meet PPA goals.
Strong scripting and automation skills in Python, TCL, Perl, Bash and build/CI systems to automate regressions, checks and toolflows.
Proficiency with EDA tool suites (Synopsys, Cadence, Mentor/Siemens) including RTL linting, formal tools and static analysis utilities.
IP integration and subsystem-level design experience, including interfaces like PCIe, MIPI, USB, Ethernet, DDR/LPDDR, SATA and custom bus protocols.
Practical knowledge of silicon validation labs: JTAG, boundary-scan, logic analyzers, oscilloscopes, ATE basics and lab automation.
Version control and configuration-management skills (Git, Perforce) and experience establishing release and branching strategies for hardware assets.
Familiarity with semiconductor manufacturing, packaging, yield analysis, and collaboration with foundries (TSMC, Samsung) and subcontractors.
Experience with performance profiling, micro-architecture optimization and hardware/software co-design for throughput and latency improvements.
Knowledge of safety, security, and export-control requirements relevant to hardware design, plus experience working under NDAs and export compliance.

Soft Skills

Strong people leadership: hiring, coaching, performance management and building high-performing teams across geographies.
Excellent program and project management skills: milestone planning, risk assessment, resource allocation and cross-functional coordination.
Clear and persuasive communication for technical and non-technical audiences; experienced in technical presentations and executive reporting.
Strong problem-solving and decision-making under schedule pressure, with bias for timely, data-informed decisions.
Collaboration and stakeholder management: ability to align architecture, product, firmware, test, manufacturing and supply-chain teams.
Mentorship and talent development: building career ladders, running technical workshops and fostering knowledge transfer.
Conflict resolution, negotiation and vendor-management skills to get the best outcomes with internal and external partners.
Strategic thinking to balance long-term architectural investments against short-term product delivery commitments.
Adaptability and resilience in a fast-paced environment with shifting priorities and complex technical challenges.
Attention to detail and disciplined documentation habits to ensure traceability and reproducibility across design cycles.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering or related STEM field.

Preferred Education:

Master's degree or PhD in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science or equivalent with emphasis on digital systems, VLSI, microarchitecture or physical design.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Electrical Engineering
Computer Engineering
Computer Science
Microelectronics / VLSI Design
Semiconductor Physics (preferred for mixed-signal/analog-heavy roles)

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 8–15+ years of semiconductor/SoC design experience with 3–7 years in people management or team lead roles.

Preferred:

10+ years delivering ASIC/SoC projects end-to-end, including multiple tapeouts and post-silicon bring-up.
Demonstrated track record of leading RTL, verification and physical-design teams to successful silicon delivery.
Experience working with leading foundries and EDA tool ecosystems, and with industry-standard IP and protocols.
Prior experience scaling teams, implementing engineering process improvements, and driving cross-functional initiatives.