Applications Engineering, Executive Director

Descriptions & Requirements

Job Description and Requirements


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 your career building technical credibility with customers who are trying to verify billion-gate designs on impossible schedules, and you know that the difference between a tool they adopt and one they abandon is whether your team can make it work in their environment, with their flows, under their constraints. You have led applications teams before, not from a distance but in the details, reviewing customer engagements, debugging escalations, and making the call on whether to customize a solution or hold the line on best practice.

You do not just manage engineers, you grow them. You know how to take a strong individual contributor and teach them to think like a trusted advisor. You have been in the room when a customer is two weeks from tapeout and nothing is working, and you have learned how to stay calm, triage fast, and mobilize the right people without creating panic.

At Synopsys, you will lead the applications engineering organization for our Hardware-assisted Verification portfolio. The products are complex, the customers are demanding, and the team you build will directly determine whether multimillion-dollar deals close and whether customers come back for the next generation.

What You'll Be Doing

• Lead and scale the applications engineering team supporting Synopsys Hardware-assisted Verification products, including emulation and prototyping platforms
• Own the technical relationship with strategic customers, ensuring successful deployment, adoption, and expansion of verification solutions in production environments
• Partner with sales, product management, and R&D to translate customer requirements and field feedback into product roadmap priorities and engineering improvements
• Drive technical win strategies for complex competitive evaluations, working directly with customer engineering teams to demonstrate differentiated value
• Build and execute hiring, onboarding, and development programs that grow technical depth and customer engagement skills across the applications team
• Establish best practices for customer engagement, escalation management, and knowledge sharing across a geographically distributed team
• Represent the voice of the customer internally, ensuring that product decisions reflect real-world deployment challenges and workflow integration needs

The Impact You Will Have

• Enable customers to accelerate their verification cycles and hit critical tapeout schedules by deploying hardware-assisted verification solutions that actually work in their environments
• Grow revenue and customer retention by building an applications team that becomes a trusted technical partner, not just a support function
• Influence product direction by surfacing field insights that drive roadmap decisions, feature prioritization, and usability improvements
• Reduce time to value for new customer deployments through repeatable methodologies, training programs, and technical collateral your team creates
• Strengthen Synopsys competitive position by winning technical evaluations where deep applications expertise makes the difference

• Develop the next generation of technical leaders within Synopsys by mentoring senior applications engineers into customer-facing leadership roles
• Shape how semiconductor and systems companies verify their most complex designs, directly impacting products that power AI, automotive, mobile, and data center innovation

What You'll Need

• 15+ years of experience in applications engineering, field engineering, or technical customer-facing roles within EDA, semiconductor IP, or hardware verification
• Proven track record leading and scaling technical teams of 10 or more engineers, ideally in a customer-facing capacity
• Deep hands-on experience with hardware-assisted verification technologies such as emulation, FPGA prototyping, or simulation acceleration
• Direct experience working with semiconductor or systems companies on complex SoC verification challenges and deployment workflows
• Strong technical foundation in digital design, verification methodologies, and EDA tool flows
• Demonstrated ability to influence product strategy and engineering priorities based on customer and market feedback
• Experience hiring, developing, and retaining senior technical talent in a competitive market is a plus

Who You Are

• You think about customer success in quarters and years, not just deals and deployments, because you know that reference accounts and renewals are built on long-term technical relationships
• You can explain a complex architectural tradeoff to an executive in two sentences without losing the nuance, and you can also sit with an engineer and debug a testbench issue for an hour if that is what it takes
• You are comfortable operating in ambiguity, whether that means navigating a product transition, entering a new market segment, or restructuring a team to meet shifting customer needs
• You measure your success by whether your team is growing, your customers are succeeding, and the business is winning.

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.


In addition to the base salary, this role may be eligible for an annual bonus, equity, and other discretionary bonuses. Synopsys offers comprehensive health, wellness, and financial benefits as part of a competitive total rewards package. The actual compensation offered will be based on a number of job-related factors, including location, skills, experience, and education. Your recruiter can share more specific details on the total rewards package upon request. The base salary range for this role is across the U.S.