Applications Engineering, Staff Engineer

We Are

Synopsys is the leader in engineering solutions from silicon to systems, enabling customers to rapidly innovate AI-powered products. We deliver industry-leading silicon design, IP, simulation and analysis solutions, and design services. We partner closely with our customers across a wide range of industries to maximize their R&D capability and productivity, powering innovation today that ignites the ingenuity of tomorrow.

You Are

You have spent years deep in the physics and mathematics of photolithography. The work energizes you because it is real, it ships on actual wafers, and when it works, you see it in yield data and customer timelines.

You do not just deliver solutions, you teach. Walking a customer through a complex SMO flow. You ask questions that uncover what the customer actually needs, not just what they asked for. When something breaks, you dig in, you do not wait for R&D to hand you an answer.

Working across time zones and organizations does not slow you down. You know how to keep a global team aligned, how to escalate when it matters, and how to move a project forward. At Synopsys, you will work with some of the most advanced lithography customers in the world, and what you build will directly shape how they bring next-generation semiconductor technology to production.

What You'll Be Doing

• Develop and deploy OPC recipes, models, and mask synthesis workflows for advanced photolithography processes including OPC, assist features, source mask optimization, and lithography verification
• Script automation and tooling using Python, Tcl, or other high-level languages to streamline customer workflows and improve model accuracy and runtime
• Provide hands-on technical support and consulting to fab customers, troubleshooting issues and delivering solutions that meet their process requirements
• Deliver customer-specific training sessions on Synopsys mask synthesis tools, walking engineers through setup, tuning, and best practices for their specific process nodes
• Collaborate with customers on joint development projects, co-authoring technical papers for industry conferences and publications that advance the state of computational lithography
• Work closely with Synopsys software R&D and product development teams globally to communicate customer needs, validate new features, and ensure tool releases meet real-world fab requirements
• Maintain regular, proactive contact with your customer base to build trusted technical relationships and anticipate their evolving lithography challenges

The Impact You Will Have

• Enable leading-edge semiconductor fabs to achieve production-ready photolithography processes on advanced nodes, directly affecting their time to market and yield
• Reduce customer debug cycles and model development time through automation scripts and best-practice workflows you create and share
• Shape the roadmap of Synopsys mask synthesis tools by bringing real customer pain points and feature requests back to the product team with the technical context that makes them actionable
• Build deep technical partnerships with fab lithography teams that make Synopsys their go-to resource when process challenges get hard
• Contribute to the broader lithography community through published work that moves the industry forward and establishes Synopsys as a thought leader
• Improve customer adoption and proficiency with Synopsys tools through training and documentation that makes complex workflows accessible
• Help bridge the gap between cutting-edge R&D and production reality, ensuring that what we build actually works in the fab

What You'll Need

• MS or PhD in Electrical Engineering, Physics, Materials Science, or related field with 3+ years of hands-on experience in OPC, lithography rule check, patterning applications, or fab lithography processes
• Strong scripting skills in Python, Tcl, or similar high-level languages, with the ability to write production-quality automation for lithography workflows
• Proficiency working in Linux environments, including command-line tools, job scheduling, and file system navigation
• Direct experience with one or more areas of mask synthesis such as OPC recipe development, model calibration, assist feature generation, source mask optimization, or design rule verification
• Demonstrated ability to work collaboratively with customers in a technical support or consulting capacity, translating their needs into working solutions
• Experience working across global teams and time zones, keeping projects on track with stakeholders in multiple regions
• Fluency in English for customer communication, technical documentation, and internal collaboration. Japanese language skill is preferred but not required.

Who You Are

• You can take a customer's vague description of a lithography problem and ask questions that get to the actual root cause
• When a script fails during a customer's tapeout cycle, you stay calm, debug methodically, and communicate clearly about what you are doing and when it will be fixed
• You have written code that other engineers actually use and maintain, and you care about making your work reusable
• You are comfortable presenting technical content to a room full of senior process engineers, and you earn their trust by listening as much as you talk
• Working with R&D teams to get a feature prioritized or a bug fixed is something you enjoy, you know how to frame the business case and provide the reproducible test case that gets things moving
• You keep your customer relationships warm through regular check-ins, because you know that trust is built in the quiet weeks, not the urgent ones

The Team You'll Be Part Of

Your recruiter will share more about the team structure and mission during the interview process.

Rewards and Benefits

We offer a comprehensive range of health, wellness, and financial benefits to cater to your needs. Our total rewards include both monetary and non-monetary offerings. Your recruiter will provide more details about the salary range and benefits during the hiring process.

At Synopsys, we want talented people of every background to feel valued and supported to do their best work. Synopsys considers all applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, military veteran status, or disability.