FPGA Firmware Engineer in Ulverston

Are your Firmware Engineer or FPGA Design Engineer career goals not being met? Are you working in a huge corporate, in a very large team on only a small module of an overall project? Bored? Are you frustrated by the bureaucracy? Are you working in a dull, tired domain? As an FPGA Engineer you will enjoy solving a variety of technical challenges in a culture where everyone trusts each other. You will gain deeper job satisfaction, variety, better rewards and a great quality of life inside and outside of work. You will like their worker autonomy, project ownership, with a commitment to inclusion, diversity and work-life balance. A good company culture resulting in a low turnover of engineering staff. Renewed investment in the business by the parent enabling strong future growth which opens up possibilities to work on other interesting products or projects within the subsea industry.

As a Firmware Engineer, FPGA Engineer you will love working in a high-technology business dedicated to providing the most reliable imaging and acoustic equipment for use in underwater applications. You will enjoy a truly international customer base; their cutting edge technology has been adopted as the preferred choice in an expanding variety of sub-sea applications including deep sea infrastructure, defence, renewables, marine life tracking systems, dive search & recovery operations, oil & gas and scientific discovery. You will work at a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Ulverston, Cumbria, on the edge of the beautiful Lake District National Park, offering exciting lifestyle choices.

You will design, implement, and optimise FPGA-based digital architectures for sonar, acoustic processing, and subsea sensing systems. The role focuses on real-time signal acquisition, high-throughput digital signal processing (DSP), beamforming, and robust operation in demanding subsea environments. The FPGA Engineer will contribute to the development of reliable, high-performance embedded systems deployed in offshore, marine, defence, and scientific applications.

What you will do:

• FPGA Architecture & Real-Time Signal Processing
  • Develop FPGA designs for: Multi-channel acoustic data acquisition, Digital down conversion (DDC), Filtering (FIR/IIR), FFT processing, Beamforming algorithms, Pulse compression and matched filtering.
  • Implement high-speed streaming data pipelines.
  • Optimise fixed-point arithmetic for deterministic real-time performance.
  • Design low-latency architectures suitable for active sonar systems.
• High-Speed Interface Development
  • Implement and validate interfaces such as: High-speed ADC/DAC interfaces, JESD204, LVDS, SERDES.
  • Develop memory interfaces (DDR3/DDR4) for buffering high-bandwidth acoustic data.
  • Ensure deterministic timing and synchronisation (e.g., PTP, trigger alignment).
• Hardware Integration & Subsea Considerations
  • Collaborate with analogue and hardware engineers on: Front-end acoustic transducer electronics, Low-noise acquisition chains, Clocking strategies and jitter management.
  • Consider power efficiency and thermal constraints in sealed subsea systems.
  • Contribute to design for reliability in harsh marine environments.
• Verification, Testing & Validation
  • Develop simulation testbenches for signal processing chains.
  • Perform bit-accurate modelling (MATLAB/Python to RTL correlation).
  • Conduct hardware bring-up and debug using: Integrated Logic Analysers (ILA), Oscilloscopes, Spectrum analysers.
  • Support acoustic tank testing and sea trials where required.
• Performance Optimisation
  • Achieve timing closure for high-speed DSP architectures.
  • Optimise FPGA resource usage (DSP slices, BRAM, LUTs).
  • Minimise latency in signal paths.
  • Improve power efficiency for long-duration subsea deployments.
• Documentation & Compliance
  • Produce design documentation and verification reports.
  • Support compliance with relevant standards (e.g., EMC, CE, marine standards, defence standards where applicable).
  • Participate in design reviews and risk assessments (FMEA).

What you will need:

• Strong proficiency in VHDL and/or Verilog.
• Experience with Xilinx (AMD) or Intel FPGAs.
• Strong understanding of Digital signal processing, fixed-point arithmetic, FFT and filtering implementations, multi-rate signal processing.
• Experience with high-speed ADC/DAC interfacing.
• Knowledge of clock domain crossing and timing constraints.
• Familiarity with MATLAB or Python for DSP modelling.

Qualifications:

• Degree in Electronic Engineering or related discipline.
• Postgraduate study in DSP, acoustics, or embedded systems (advantageous).

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

• Successful real-time processing at required bandwidth.
• Timing closure at target clock frequencies.
• Low defect rate in sea trials.

About the company:

The company is well established, stable, and specialises in the production of high performance acoustic sensors, imaging sonar, depth sensing and navigation tracking equipment for the subsea industry. With the backing of its parent company they are now poised to launch more new products, next generation sonar systems, providing robust underwater solutions in the harshest environments for their customers worldwide.