FPGA Design Engineer

FPGA Digital Design Engineer

The FPGA Digital Design Engineer supports the development of field-programmable gate array (FPGA) firmware for airborne telemetry, radio frequency (RF), secure communications, and embedded flight-safety systems developed at the Bristol site. This role contributes to the design, implementation, verification, and integration of advanced digital telemetry, signal processing, instrumentation, and encryption functions used in ruggedized mission-critical embedded hardware. The position works closely with electrical, RF, systems, and software engineering teams to translate system-level requirements into FPGA architecture and very-high-speed integrated circuit hardware description language (VHDL) implementations. The successful candidate will join a collaborative engineering organization focused on delivering high-reliability solutions supporting United States and allied aerospace and defense platforms.

Essential Functions:

• Support estimation, planning, and scheduling of FPGA development activities across the full product lifecycle.
• Translate system and circuit-card-level requirements into FPGA requirements, specifications, and architectures.
• Implement FPGA designs in VHDL, ensuring proper synthesis, timing closure, constraint management, resource efficiency, and platform-specific optimization.
• Verify FPGA functionality through simulation, then integrate and test designs on targeted circuit card assemblies in airborne and ruggedized environments.
• Develop digital signal processing and communication-oriented FPGA functions such as filtering, mixing, signal conversion, encoding, and error-correction.
• Follow, apply, and refine disciplined firmware development processes, peer reviews, and documentation practices.
• Generate clear technical documentation including design review materials, block diagrams, interface documents, and test plans and procedures.
• Collaborate closely with RF, systems, electrical, and software engineers to ensure clean digital-to-RF and digital-to-system integration.
• Prepare FPGA designs for production readiness by supporting qualification, environmental testing, and performance validation.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree and a minimum of six years of relevant engineering experience; or a graduate degree and a minimum of four years of related experience; or, in lieu of a degree, a minimum of ten years of related engineering experience.
• Preferred experience with VHDL development, FPGA design methodologies, and FPGA toolchains.
• Experience implementing FPGA designs with demanding timing, routing, or resource constraints.
• Experience integrating FPGA designs onto circuit card assemblies and using laboratory equipment such as oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and signal generators.
• Experience with at least one major FPGA vendor platform such as AMD (Xilinx), (Altera), or Microchip (Microsemi).
• Ability to obtain and maintain a United States Secret security clearance.

The Company offers the following benefits for this position, subject to applicable eligibility requirements: medical insurance, dental insurance, vision insurance, 401(k) retirement plan, life insurance, long-term disability insurance, short-term disability insurance, paid parking/public transportation, paid time off, paid sick and safe time, hours of paid vacation time, weeks of paid parental leave, and paid holidays annually – as applicable.