Principal FPGA Engineer – Contract (Inside IR35)
Position Summary
We are seeking a contract Principal FPGA Engineer to join a multi-disciplinary engineering team developing next-generation Front-End Electronics (FEE) products for space applications. The successful candidate will acquire deep knowledge of current and new device architectures and lead FPGA development end-to-end. Existing designs are produced in VHDL and Verilog across industry-standard toolchains.
Essential Experience
- 3+ years of industrial FPGA design in VHDL and Verilog
- Use of Microchip Libero and/or Xilinx Vivado design environments
- Functional verification using self-checking testbenches and simulation
- Timing verification using timing constraints and static timing analysis
- Ability to generate accurate estimates and define tasks for FPGA product delivery
- Authoring technical documentation including requirements specifications, design documents, test specifications, user manuals and work instructions
- Proficiency with electronic test equipment (oscilloscopes, logic analysers, etc.)
- End-to-end FPGA development, maintenance and lifecycle management, working closely with Embedded Software, Electronics and Systems Engineers
- High-speed (Gigabit) transceiver interface design
Advantageous Skills and Experience
- Prior experience in Spaceflight, Aerospace or Defence programmes
- Working knowledge of ECSS standards and development processes
- FPGA design techniques for high-reliability and radiation-tolerant environments
- Requirement verification using UVVM testbench methodology
- Working knowledge of SpaceWire and RMAP protocols
- Image handling and processing
- SVN configuration control
- AXI interfaces
- Automation and scripting for CI/CD pipelines
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