Software Engineer II

At Cadence, we hire and develop leaders and innovators who want to make an impact on the world of technology.

Cadence is a pivotal leader in electronic design, building upon more than 30 years of computational software expertise. The company applies its underlying Intelligent System Design strategy to deliver software, hardware and IP that turn design concepts into reality.

Cadence customers are the world’s most innovative companies, delivering extraordinary electronic products from chips to boards to systems for the most dynamic market applications including consumer, hyperscale computing, 5G communications, automotive, aerospace industrial and health.

At Cadence, we hire and develop leaders and innovators who want to make an impact on the world of technology.

Job Title: Software Engineer II – Stratus HLS AI/LLM Systems

Location: Cork, Ireland

Reports to: Engineering Group Director, Stratus HLS

Job Overview:

Cadence is seeking a Software Engineer to join the Stratus High Level Synthesis (HLS) engineering team in Cork. This role will contribute to building AI-powered tools that help engineers get more value from one of the EDA industry’s leading high-level synthesis platforms.

In this role, you will write production-quality C++ and Python code, design and test LLM-based agent systems, and develop IDE tooling. You will work alongside experienced software engineers in a technically deep, fast-moving environment. This is an excellent opportunity for an early-career engineer to strengthen core software engineering skills while gaining cutting-edge experience in applied AI systems.

Job Responsibilities:

• Implement AI agent features that leverage LLMs for tasks such as code interpretation, code completion and code generation within the Stratus HLS environment.
• Build and test agentic pipelines that connect Stratus tools and APIs to deliver context-aware guidance to users.
• Apply prompt engineering techniques and contribute to retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines to improve the accuracy and relevance of AI responses.
• Author and maintain Skills, including slash commands for AI coding agents such as Claude Code and openCode, encoding Stratus domain knowledge into reusable workflows.
• Design Skills that orchestrate multi-step agentic flows, combining tool calls, context retrieval and structured prompts to automate complex Stratus operations reliably and repeatably.
• Evaluate emerging LLM models and frameworks, including Claude, GPT-4 and open-source alternatives, and prototype their application to HLS workflows.
• Instrument AI agent behaviour and contribute to quality metrics that track accuracy, latency and user experience.

• Write, review and maintain clean, well-tested C++ code within the Stratus codebase, following established engineering standards and design patterns.
• Read feature specifications and translate them into implementation plans, data structures and modular software designs.
• Develop VS Code extension components in TypeScript/JavaScript that surface AI agent capabilities directly in the engineer’s IDE.
• Write unit and integration tests, submit code through the Stratus regression system, and resolve failures to ensure every commit meets quality standards before release.
• Participate in code reviews, giving and receiving constructive feedback to strengthen both the codebase and personal development.

• Participate in technical design reviews, contributing ideas and asking questions that sharpen the team’s understanding of problems.
• Collaborate with senior engineers and domain experts to understand HLS workflows and apply that knowledge to well-engineered solutions.
• Stay current with LLM and AI agent research, prototype new techniques and share findings with the engineering team.
• Write clear engineering documentation, including design notes, API documentation and inline comments, so code decisions are understandable and maintainable over time.

Job Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering or a closely related field with 2+ years of relevant industry experience; or
• Master’s degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering or a closely related field with 1+ year of relevant industry experience.

• Solid programming skills in C++ or another compiled, statically typed language, with an understanding of memory management, performance trade-offs and code organisation.
• Proficiency in Python, including scripting for data processing, automation or ML workflows.
• Experience working with LLM APIs, AI agent frameworks or machine learning tools through academic projects, internships or industry experience.
• Strong understanding of data structures, algorithms and fundamental software design principles such as modularity, separation of concerns and testability.
• Ability to read specifications and break them into well-structured implementation tasks with clear interfaces and testable units.

• Enthusiastic and motivated, with a genuine interest in writing good software and learning how complex systems work.
• Collaborative team player who communicates clearly, accepts feedback constructively and asks for help when needed.
• Comfortable working in a fast-moving environment where both requirements and underlying technologies evolve frequently.

Additional Skills/Preferences:

• Experience writing Skills or slash commands for AI coding agents, such as Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, openCode or other prompt-driven automation frameworks.
• Familiarity with VS Code extension development or other IDE plugin frameworks, including Language Server Protocol and Debug Adapter Protocol.
• Exposure to Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools, High Level Synthesis (HLS) or hardware design workflows.
• Experience with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), vector databases such as Chroma, Pinecone or Weaviate, or embedding pipelines.
• Exposure to fine-tuning or instruction-tuning LLMs on domain-specific datasets.
• Familiarity with Tcl scripting or scripted automation.
• Basic understanding of cloud ML inference infrastructure, including AWS, GCP or Azure.
• Open-source contributions to AI/ML or developer tooling projects.

Additional Information:

The Stratus software engineering team is a collaborative group of engineers responsible for core HLS functionality, verification flows and increasingly AI-powered user experiences. The team places a strong emphasis on engineering craft, including readable code, thorough testing and well-considered design. New engineers benefit from close mentorship and regular pairing with senior team members.

• Senior software engineers who provide mentorship and code review.
• HLS algorithm and compiler engineers who provide domain expertise.
• QA and release engineering teams who own the regression infrastructure.
• A broader Cadence AI platform team sharing LLM infrastructure and tooling across product lines.

• Primary languages: C++, Tcl, Python
• AI/ML frameworks: GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, openCode
• IDE tooling: VS Code Extension API, Language Server Protocol
• Version control: SVN, Git, Perforce
• Build & CI: Internal Cadence regression and release systems
• Documentation: Confluence, internal wiki

Check what we can offer you:

• Competitive salary 
• 25 days holiday per year 
• Private Medical and Dental plans, Income Protection and Life Insurance 
• Group Personal Pension Plan 
• Cycle to work scheme and gym subsidy 
• 5 days paid time to volunteer to give back to our communities 
• Employee Stock Purchase Plan 
• The opportunity to work for a Great Place to Work© & Fortune 100 organization 

Cadence is committed to equal employment opportunity and employment equity throughout all levels of the organization. We strive to attract a qualified and diverse candidate pool and encourage diversity and inclusion in the workplace.

Travel: 10%

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