Senior / Principal FPGA Engineer

Role Overview

The Senior / Principal FPGA engineer would be responsible for design and development of FPGA designs using VHDL and verifying designs using VHDL or System Verilog.

Job Responsibilities

• Creating innovative and robust VHDL-based designs
• Documenting and recording deliverables
• Verifying FPGA designs
• Ensuring configuration management/keeping designs under revision control
• Providing progress reports

Mandatory Skills & Qualifications

• At least 5 years’ experience developing FPGA using VHDL or Verilog
• Experienced with Mentor Graphics FPGA development tools including HDL Designer, ModelSim / Questa and Precision
• Familiar with Xilinx / Intel (Altera) / Microsemi (Actel) design flows (ISE, Vivado, Quartus) and third‑party synthesis tools
• Experience specifying timing and area constraints for efficient FPGA Placement and Routing
• Independent verification using VHDL
• Experience with FPGA requirements capture and requirements management tools
• Good understanding of FPGA version control and revision control software
• Experience making technical decisions and mitigating technical risk for FPGA design activities
• Ability to coordinate day‑to‑day technical activities, liaising closely with the Project Engineering Lead / Lead FPGA engineer & other disciplines
• Excellent communication (oral & written) & interpersonal skills
• Ability to analyse system and/or hardware level requirements and derive detailed FPGA requirements
• Debugging FPGA designs and supporting integration & verification at hardware and system level
• Experience with high‑speed serial protocols and implementations
• Linux and scripting experience
• Experience writing technical reports / documentation

Desirable

• Development of real‑time, embedded, safety‑critical FPGA, preferably in accordance with RTCA/DO-254 DAL A or B
• Independent verification using SystemVerilog / UVM
• Relevant experience in the aerospace or defence industry
• Experience of embedded processor cores (e.g. ARM) in FPGA designs
• Familiarity with latest FPGA device families
• Practical experience with agile methodology

Location

• Edinburgh, UK

Qualifications

• Honours degree or equivalent in Electronics Engineering or another STEM‑based subject
• UK citizenship is mandatory to be able to clear background checks and obtain SC clearance
• Current valid SC clearance would be an advantage