Silicon Research Engineering Lead

NORMAL COMPUTING | INCREDIBLE OPPORTUNITIES The Normal Team builds foundational software and hardware that help move technology forward - supporting the semiconductor industry, critical AI infrastructure, and the broader systems that power our world. We work as one team across New York, San Francisco, Copenhagen, Seoul, and London. YOUR ROLE IN OUR MISSION Normal is building a new class of computing hardware, rethinking the physics of computation from the ground up to unlock performance and efficiency that conventional architectures can't reach. As Silicon Research Engineering Lead, You will shepherd these ideas through the research lab and to a point where it can be translated into working silicon. You will have enough intuition and experience to know what areas show potential and when we should move on. Your role has a lot of latitude. You will stay abreast of the latest developments in silicon with an eye towards incorporating novel technologies in pursuit of our ambitious goals. You will not be the person architecting the SoC or running the tapeout. You will be the person making sure that what arrives at the design team's door is well-characterized, feasible, and relevant to our goals. You will forge and maintain relationships with our research partners and direct those efforts. You will lead our silicon research team and be involved with device physics, analog circuitry and novel architectures. You will work closely with our silicon implementation team. The strongest candidates are research-lab-native engineers with a math or physics foundation, deep experience in novel analog, photonic, neuromorphic, or other non-conventional compute domains, and a track record of pushing unconventional ideas meaningfully toward production. RESPONSIBILITIES - Own the research process with an eye towards production taking many disparate ideas and finding which ones can work together towards our broader goals. - De-risk new ideas coming out of research through modeling, simulation, prototype design, and targeted experiments. - Partner closely with Normal's hardware team making sure the specs and building blocks you hand over are grounded in both research intent and silicon reality - Work across analog, mixed-signal, photonic, and other novel-compute domains as the architecture evolves, moving flexibly between approaches rather than defending a single one - Help set the technical direction for which research threads move toward silicon next, and which need more upstream work before they're ready - Represent Normal's technical work externally with research partners, academic collaborators, and potential hires - Guide our efforts as we publish selected work. - Hire great research engineers. WHAT MAKES YOU A GREAT FIT - Strong math, physics, or EE research foundation, ideally with a PhD or equivalent depth in a relevant area - Hands-on research experience in novel analog circuitry, device physics, photonic integrated circuits, neuromorphic or in-memory compute, or other non-conventional compute domains. - Track record of moving research-stage ideas toward silicon, whether in a national lab, corporate research lab, university research group with tapeout activity, or a novel silicon startup - Ability to operate as a technical translator between research scientists and silicon design engineers, holding the language and the rigor of both sides - Comfort with ambiguity and with work that precedes clean specifications, while still producing artifacts a design team can act on - Experience using agentic tools in silicon workflows BONUS POINTS FOR - Experience with stochastic, probabilistic, thermodynamic, or Ising-style computing approaches - Experience optimizing ML algorithms for silicon Equal Employment Opportunity Statement Normal Computing is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without rega