---
title: 'Thermodynamic Hardware Resident at Normal Computing Corporation'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/thermodynamic-hardware-resident-normal-computing-corporation-new-york-jg4avbjrxt43'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-10'
---

# Thermodynamic Hardware Resident at Normal Computing Corporation

- **Company:** Normal Computing Corporation
- **Location:** New York, NY
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-08-22
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-10
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/normalcomputing/5d57d8b1-612d-4ee0-941e-78a032a1ada2

## Job description

Normal Computing | Build with Us Normal is an applied AI company solving the hardest problems in AI and silicon. We build foundational hardware and software for the semiconductor industry, critical AI infrastructure, and the broader systems that power our world, in partnership with the world's most advanced institutions. We work as one team across New York City, Silicon Valley (Mountain View), London, Copenhagen, and Seoul. The Residency Program The Thermodynamic Hardware Residency is Normal Computing's flagship program for exceptional researchers and engineers who want to work at the frontier of unconventional computing. Residents join a small, hand-picked cohort with a dedicated research mentor, direct access to the team building our cutting-edge thermodynamic hardware, and a clear arc from onboarding through publication. Every residency is built around two milestones that mark you as part of something bigger than a single project: a research paper co-authored with our team, and a company-wide research colloquium where you present your findings to the full Normal Computing organization. You'll leave with a body of published, presented work, and a standing as one of the earliest residents to help define what this program becomes. Exceptional performers will be considered for full-time conversion at the end of the residency.

## Your Normal Experience

- You'll spend your residency embedded with the team building and characterizing our unconventional, thermodynamic computing hardware — silicon that exploits physical noise and analog dynamics rather than fighting them.
- This is a hands-on research residency: you'll take ownership of a real technical problem at the boundary of physics, hardware, and machine learning, work alongside the researchers and engineers building our hardware, and be expected to contribute ideas, not just execute someone else's.
- Our hardware is designed to deliver orders-of-magnitude more AI inference per dollar, per watt than conventional GPUs — not by porting existing GPU kernels onto new chips, but by rethinking how core operations work when the substrate itself is stochastic analog computation in memory rather than conventional digital logic. That rethinking, from device physics up through algorithms, is exactly the kind of problem residents take on.
- You'll get direct exposure to the pace, ambiguity, and speed of decision-making that comes with working at a fast-moving, well-funded hardware startup — where the distance between an idea on a whiteboard and a test on real silicon is measured in weeks, not years.

## What You'll Do

- Work hands-on with thermodynamic hardware. Help design, simulate, characterize, or evaluate our hardware, where noise, analog dynamics, and in-memory computation are first-class design elements rather than sources of error to be engineered away.
- Design numerical methods for a new substrate. Explore algorithms and numerical methods that exploit thermal noise and analog dynamics directly, rather than adapting techniques built for conventional digital hardware.
- Drive a research question of your own. Partner with researchers and hardware engineers to scope, run, and iterate on an original technical investigation — from device- or circuit-level physics up to algorithms and workloads that map onto thermodynamic compute.
- Build evaluation frameworks and benchmarks. Help build the tests and benchmarks that measure how algorithmic ideas actually perform on real hardware and in simulation, and feed what you learn about model workloads back into hardware design decisions.
- Co-author a paper. Work with the team to write up your findings for submission to a relevant venue, with mentorship on framing, experiments, and technical writing along the way — one of the two milestones every resident builds toward.
- Present at the residency colloquium. Share your work and thinking with the broader Normal Computing research community at the program's capstone event, and get real-time feedback from people building this technology every day.
- Experience startup pace firsthand. Work directly with founders, senior researchers, and engineers in a lean, fast-moving environment where priorities shift quickly and your work has an outsized, visible impact.

What Would Make You a Great Fit

- Currently pursuing or recently completed a graduate degree (MS or PhD, or equivalent research experience) in physics, electrical engineering, computer engineering, computer science, applied math, or a related field — with a focus on hardware, device physics, stochastic or analog computing, or machine learning systems.
- Comfortable moving between levels of abstraction: from the physics of noise and analog devices, to circuit- and architecture-level tradeoffs, to the algorithms and workloads that will eventually run on this hardware.
- Some exposure to large-model inference concepts — attention mechanisms, KV caching, long-context decoding — and an interest in how they change when the underlying hardware isn't a GPU. Production-level experience isn't expected at the resident level, but the intuition should feel familiar.
- Strong Python skills, plus comfort with (or eagerness to learn) a lower-level systems language such as C++ or Rust; hands-on experience with simulation, experimentation, or hardware characterization (e.g., SPICE, PyTorch, FPGA or ASIC tooling) is a plus.
- First-principles reasoning about novel computational substrates: a genuine curiosity about unconventional computing, where exploiting thermal noise rather than suppressing it sounds more interesting than intimidating.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills; prior experience writing up research (papers, theses, technical reports) is a plus, as is any experience presenting technical work to a live audience.
- A bias toward ownership and self-direction: you're energized, not overwhelmed, by the ambiguity and speed of a small, fast-moving startup.

## 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 regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, or any other legally protected status. Accessibility Accommodations Normal Computing is committed to providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities. If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, please let us know at accommodations@normalcomputing.com. Privacy Notice By submitting your application, you agree that Normal Computing may collect, use, and store your personal information for employment-related purposes in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

## About Normal Computing Corporation

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Normal Computing builds AI-accelerated EDA software and physics-based ASICs to enable ultra-efficient hardware for the AI era.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series B; total funding $92.5M)
- **Headquarters**: New York, New York, USA
- **Founded**: 2022
- **Founders**: Faris Sbahi (CEO), Matthias Tan (Co-Founder), and team of former Google Brain/Google X engineers and scientists

## Core Business
- Primary industry: Semiconductor design (EDA) and custom silicon (ASICs), powered by AI and probabilistic computing.
- Target customers: Large semiconductor design and manufacturing institutions (B2B, enterprise).
- Mission: "Rewriting AI foundations to advance the frontier of reasoning and reliability in the physical world" and enabling a virtuous cycle of self-improving AI hardware.

## Products & Services
- **[Normal EDA](https://normalcomputing.com/)**: An AI-driven electronic design automation platform that understands design intent from specification documents, generates hierarchical test plans with traceability, creates SystemVerilog stimulus, runs simulations, and tracks coverage. It continuously learns from team feedback to accelerate verification for complex chip designs.
- **[Normal ASICs](https://normalcomputing.com/)**: Physics-based custom ASICs that relax traditional computing assumptions (stochastic, stateful, asynchronous) to unlock orders-of-magnitude more efficient compute. Designed to converge hardware with the physical dynamics of AI models.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed.
- **Key Metric**: **Total Funding** – $92.5M across multiple rounds (Seed, Venture, Grant, Series B). Notable recent round: $50M led by **Samsung Catalyst** in March 2026 [normalcomputing.com](https://normalcomputing.com/).
- **Notable Investors**: Samsung Catalyst Fund, Intel Ignite, First Spark Ventures, Celesta Capital, ARIA. Also partners with Fraunhofer IESE (DRAMBench benchmark).
- **Growth Signals**: Headcount grew **196.3% YoY** to 54 employees; operates across 6 countries (US, UK, Denmark, Switzerland, India, Canada); actively building open-source tools (e.g., a Verilog simulator built with AI: 580K lines in 43 days).

## Competitive Advantages
- **Physics-First Approach**: Unlike traditional digital logic, Normal’s ASICs embrace stochastic, stateful, and asynchronous computing – aligning hardware with the physics of AI models for dramatic efficiency gains.
- **Full-Stack Co-Design**: The combination of AI-native EDA tools and custom silicon creates a closed loop where software and hardware are co-optimized, shortening time-to-market and enabling workload-specific ASICs.
- **Deep AI Heritage**: Founders and team hail from Google Brain and Google X, bringing deep expertise in probabilistic ML, quantum AI, and physical-world reasoning.

## Strategic Focus
- **Scaling EDA Adoption**: Expanding Normal EDA’s use among top semiconductor companies to "make chip design look more like software".
- **AI Hardware Energy Crisis**: Tackling soaring power demands of AI by delivering ultra-efficient ASICs that can be produced for every workload.
- **Open-Source & Research**: Building community trust through open benchmarks (DRAMBench) and tools (CIRCT-based verification), while advancing formal methods and AI-driven simulation.

## Why Work Here
- **Hybrid Workspace**: Flexible in-office collaboration at offices in **New York (Flatiron HQ)**, **San Francisco**, **London**, and **Copenhagen**. In-person collaboration is valued but with flexibility; free lunch, snacks, and beverages in office.
- **Lean, High-Impact Team**: Small team (54 employees) where every member drives significant impact, works directly with customers, and owns meaningful parts of the product.
- **Interdisciplinary Challenges**: Work spans AI, probabilistic software, hardware, physics, and full-stack engineering – ideal for curious, passionate problem-solvers.
- **Strong Growth Trajectory**: Rapid headcount growth (+196% YoY), recent $50M Series B, and partnerships with industry giants signal a well-funded, high-potential startup.

## Sources
1. [normalcomputing.com](https://normalcomputing.com/)
2. [normalcomputing.com/about](https://normalcomputing.com/about)
3. [linkedin.com/company/normal-computing-corporation](https://www.linkedin.com/company/normal-computing-corporation)
4. [builtin.com/company/normal-computing](https://builtin.com/company/normal-computing)
5. [jobs.ashbyhq.com/normalcomputing](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/normalcomputing)

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