Senior FPGA Engineer

Active Silicon is a market leader in the design and manufacture of leading-edge computer imaging products. These products are used in many areas of science and industry, including manufacturing, life sciences, medical imaging, robotics, and security, with many products targeted to specific customer requirements. The current range of products can be seen on the company’s website. The type of customers we have are generally medium to large companies with which we forge strong long-term relationships and are located all over the world. Active Silicon is part of the Solid State plc group, listed on the AIM stock market.

As part of Active Silicon’s expansion, there is now the need for a Senior FPGA Engineer. The ideal candidate will be able to take ownership of complex FPGA-related projects from a design, support, and maintenance perspective.

• Job Type: A technical role for advanced FPGA design, verification, and support
• Location: Langley, UK (just outside M25, NW London) with the option of hybrid home/office working
• Hours: 37.5 hours per week, 26 days (plus public holidays)
• Salary: Range £40,000 to £75,000 depending on skills and experience, plus salary-sacrifice pension (5% employer, 3% employee) and discretionary bonus scheme. Life assurance at 4x basic salary. Access to Westfield Health Scheme including: Employee Assistance Programme, Discounted gym membership.

Qualifications: Typically a Bachelor's degree in electronic engineering or similar, and maybe a post-graduate Master’s degree.

Experience: Likely to be 5+ years commercial FPGA and general hardware design experience.

The type of person we are looking for: The right candidate is likely to have a good engineering degree, plus perhaps other post-graduate qualifications and a track record of design engineering in the field of high-speed digital/FPGA. One of the most important traits is the desire, drive, and enthusiasm to produce the world’s best-in-class products. Focused – able to work to deadlines and meet targets. Success driven – having the desire to produce the best products, right first time. Experienced in FPGA design using VHDL/SystemVerilog with AMD (Xilinx), Lattice, or Intel (Altera) products. Familiarity with high-speed interfaces in FPGAs such as PCI Express, Ethernet, CoaXPress, MIPI, QSFP, and DDR4/5. Familiarity with advanced simulation methods including OSVVM/SystemVerilog. Familiarity with general hardware, PCB, and EMI/EMC best practices. Communication – good written, verbal, and presentation skills – the ability to communicate with the rest of the engineering team, as well as to customers from a support perspective.

Useful additional expertise:

• Experience working with imaging devices, GenICam software standard, video processing/streaming, working with cameras, codecs, and streaming protocols.
• Experience of C#, Python, Qt, WPF, Visual Studio.
• Experience working with Windows and Linux device drivers.
• Experience with Nvidia Jetson.
• Experience creating CI/CD and automated test infrastructure with hardware in the loop.
• Experience building CI/CD pipelines with GitLab or GitHub.
• Familiarity with I2C, SPI, CoaXPress protocols.
• Familiarity reading schematics and using lab equipment such as oscilloscopes.