FPGA Engineer in Cambridge

A fantastic opportunity has arisen for an FPGA Engineer to join the Engineering team of a leading technology company based in Cambridge.

This role is responsible for the design, implementation, verification and maintenance of FPGA logic for controller boards supporting optical switching products.

You will play a key role in developing reliable FPGA solutions using VHDL on Xilinx Artix-7 devices, supporting the full development lifecycle from initial design through to hardware validation and production release.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, implement and maintain FPGA logic in VHDL for Xilinx Artix-7 devices using Vivado, ensuring adherence to coding standards and best practices.
• Develop deterministic finite state machines (FSMs) to control and sequence hardware interfaces and embedded protocols.
• Design and validate low-level driver logic for interfaces including I2C and SPI, with UART and other serial interfaces where required.
• Create and maintain self-checking test benches, perform functional and timing simulations, and document verification activities.
• Carry out FPGA hardware bring-up, testing and validation using laboratory equipment including logic analysers and oscilloscopes.
• Develop and maintain timing constraints (XDC), manage clocking strategies, resets and clock domain crossing (CDC) considerations, achieving timing closure for production-ready designs.
• Support system integration by working closely with electronics and embedded software engineers.
• Produce high-quality technical documentation including design specifications, interface documentation, verification reports and release notes.
• Participate in design reviews, code reviews and continuous improvement initiatives relating to FPGA development processes and automation.
• Maintain FPGA source code and releases using version control systems, ensuring traceability throughout the development lifecycle.

The ideal candidate must have

• Degree (or equivalent experience) in Electronic Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering or a related discipline.
• Strong commercial experience developing FPGA solutions using VHDL.
• Proven experience targeting Xilinx Artix-7 FPGA devices.
• Confident user of Xilinx Vivado including synthesis, implementation, timing analysis, place & route and bitstream generation.
• Strong understanding of finite state machine (FSM) design.
• Experience implementing and validating low-level communication interfaces including I2C and SPI.
• Experience writing self-checking test benches and carrying out FPGA simulation.
• Practical hardware debugging experience using laboratory test equipment.
• Strong understanding of timing constraints (XDC), synchronous design principles, clock domain crossing (CDC), metastability and reset strategies.
• Experience using version control systems such as SVN.

If this role looks like your next challenge, please contact Ben ASAP or apply via this advert!

We endeavour to reply to every candidate, every time but if you haven't heard back within 10 days, please understand that you have unfortunately been unsuccessful for this position, or the position has been filled.