Place and Route Design Automation Engineer in Toronto

About Altera
At Altera, our independence as the world's largest pure-play FPGA solutions provider gives us the focus, speed, and agility to innovate without compromise. With more than four decades of industry-leading FPGA expertise, our singular mission is to deliver the programmable technologies that help customers differentiate, innovate, and scale across rapidly evolving markets like AI, cloud, networking, and edge.

About the Role
Altera is seeking a motivated Senior Place & Route (P&R) Design Automation Engineer to join our Design Methodology and Automation organization. In this role, you will contribute to the development and support of automated P&R tools, flows, and methodologies used in next-generation FPGA silicon development. You will collaborate closely with physical design, CAD, and cross-functional engineering teams to improve quality of results (QoR), runtime efficiency, and overall flow robustness. This role is well-suited for an engineer with hands-on P&R or physical design experience who is looking to deepen technical expertise in semiconductor design automation.

Key Responsibilities

• Work on Place & Route tools, flows, and methodologies for FPGA silicon design development.
• Contribute to the development of new methodologies for next-generation Place & Route flows and tool enhancements.
• Help maintain and improve existing P&R automation flows and infrastructure.
• Provide end-user support for flow tools, including debugging issues and promoting best practices.
• Develop and enhance scripts and automation utilities to improve usability, efficiency, and scalability.
• Support improvements in P&R quality of results (timing, power, congestion, density, and overall design closure).
• Assist in evaluating and testing new P&R tool capabilities and methodologies.
• Identify design or flow bottlenecks and implement practical optimizations.
• Collaborate closely with multi-geo teams across physical design, RTL, synthesis, and CAD to ensure robust end-to-end flow support.
• Document methodologies, flow updates, and usage guidelines.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical field, with 7+ years of industry experience in semiconductor design or design automation.
• 7+ years of hands-on experience in Place & Route (P&R), physical design, or design automation within FPGA or ASIC development environments.
• 7+ years of experience working with Place & Route tools and strong applied knowledge of P&R algorithms, methodologies, and design flows.
• 7+ years of experience using industry-standard EDA vendor tools (e.g., Synopsys and Cadence P&R tool suites) in production design environments.
• 7+ years of strong coding experience in Tcl, Perl, and Python for automation, scripting, and tool integration.
• 7+ years of experience working in Unix/Linux development environments.
• 7+ years of experience applying physical design fundamentals, including floorplanning, placement, clocking, routing, and static timing analysis (STA).
• 7+ years of experience debugging and resolving tool, flow, or design issues in a collaborative engineering environment.
• 7+ years of experience collaborating with cross-functional and/or multi-geo engineering teams to support design execution.

Salary Range: Estimated Salary Range: $83,500 - 120,925 CAD.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, religious creed, sex, national origin, ancestry, age, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, military and veteran status, marital status, pregnancy, gender, gender expression, gender identity, sexual orientation or any other characteristic protected by local law, regulation or ordinance.