Foundry Interface Engineer

As a Foundry Interface Engineer at Block's Proto division, you engage with foundry partners and internal teams to continuously improve the design of ASICs for Bitkey and mining initiatives. You partner with OSATs to monitor production wafer test data, work with circuit designers to analyze results, and make requests to the foundry for process fine-tuning to meet technology and product goals.

What you'll do

• Review and assess foundry silicon data against SPICE and design goals, compile SPICE to silicon gap analysis, and drive foundry partners on CIPs to improve foundry process and meet technology entitlement and product goals
• Work with foundry to identify potential device parameter changes to enable efficient low-voltage operation
• Work closely with circuit designers to determine what device improvements could improve circuit performance and energy efficiency
• Engage with foundry partners and third-party vendors to manage foundry PDK and design library collaterals
• Guide internal IP and design teams on appropriate usage of technology attributes and offerings in accordance with product requirements such as performance, power, area, and cost
• Collaborate with internal third-party infrastructure, customization, test-chip, methodology, and packaging and product test engineering teams for seamless execution of product bring-up and productization
• Work with test engineers to analyze and validate production wafer data
• Contribute to binning strategy to maximize parametric yield

What you bring

• 10+ years of post-education experience in FAB or fabless environments, technology definition and bring-up, device and process architecture, and NPI
• Experience with foundry design kit, SPICE, DR/DRC evaluation, and SPICE to silicon assessment
• Experience with advanced node device physics such as FinFET and GAA, backside power, and product design phases
• Experience with product KPIs, DTCO, and parametric DLY/PLY analysis and gap closure
• Understanding of low power design techniques including Vmin reduction, power gating, multi-voltage design, chip power, clock network and optimization
• Understanding of layout effects and their impact to circuit design

Nice to have

• Master's degree or PhD in Electrical Engineering, Physics, or other related Engineering field with emphasis on semiconductor materials, devices, and device physics
• Production test development experience
• Familiarity with advanced FinFET technology nodes at 3nm and 2nm
• Familiarity with PDK and device models
• Previous work experience at semiconductor foundries
• Familiarity with standard cell design and layout

What we offer

• Remote work
• Medical insurance
• Flexible time off
• Retirement savings plans
• Modern family planning benefits

About Block

Block, Inc. builds technology to increase access to the global economy. Proto, a division of Block, is developing Bitkey, a simple self-custody bitcoin wallet, alongside hardware and software for decentralized bitcoin mining and innovative bitcoin use cases.