Senior Electronics Hardware Engineer Engineering, Production, Manufacture in Plymouth

From the Mariana Trench, the deepest point on earth, to surging shorelines and anywhere in-between, we make the impossible possible through our continuous passion for innovation.

Our people design, engineer and manufacture technologies that are enabling our customers to discover, navigate, measure, detect and communicate in the toughest environment on earth: Our oceans.We’ve been actively developing the technology to make the oceans accessible for over 50 years and we’re only just getting started…At Sonardyne, we value different ways of thinking. Whether you think in code, patterns, systems, or steps, your unique perspective is important to us.

Want to design electronics that have to work hundreds – sometimes thousands – of metres beneath the ocean?

At Sonardyne, we’re not designing electronics that spend their lives sitting safely on a desk.

We develop sophisticated underwater technology that has to perform reliably in some of the most challenging environments on the planet.

We’re looking for a Senior Electronics Hardware Engineer to join our engineering team and help develop the next generation of Sonardyne subsea technology.

This is a genuinely hands-on electronics design role.

You’ll be designing real hardware, building and testing prototypes, getting equipment onto the bench, solving difficult technical problems and seeing your designs progress all the way from an initial idea through to manufacture – and ultimately into the ocean.

If you’re an experienced electronics engineer who still loves actually engineering, we’d like to hear from you.

What could you be working on?

Variety is a big part of engineering at Sonardyne.

Our electronics sit at the heart of technologies including underwater acoustic communications, Doppler Velocity Logs, navigation systems, intelligent sensors and ultra-low-power subsea instrumentation.

That creates some fascinating engineering challenges.

How do you design electronics that deliver excellent performance while consuming very little power?

How do you minimise noise when you’re trying to detect incredibly small signals?

How do you make digital, analogue, processors, FPGA and embedded software all play nicely together?

And how do you make the whole thing reliable enough to operate underwater for long periods where popping out to replace a component isn’t exactly an option?

Those are the sorts of problems you’ll help us solve.

What you’ll be doing

You’ll take technical ownership of electronics hardware across new and existing Sonardyne products, working alongside talented engineers from electronics, embedded software, systems, mechanical and manufacturing disciplines.

You’ll be involved throughout the engineering lifecycle, including:

• Designing analogue, digital and mixed-signal electronics for sophisticated subsea products.
• Developing low-noise and low-power circuitry, sensor interfaces, processor and FPGA-based architectures.
• Taking designs from initial concept and architecture through schematic design, prototype and production.
• Using CAD for schematic capture and supporting PCB layout and design.
• Selecting components and making considered engineering trade-offs around performance, power, cost, availability and manufacturability.
• Getting hands-on in the lab to bring up new boards and prototypes.
• Debugging hardware and investigating those particularly stubborn problems that don’t behave quite as the simulation suggested they would.
• Writing embedded C and potentially C++ to support board bring-up, diagnostics and hardware integration.
• Designing with EMC in mind and supporting EMC testing and compliance activities.
• Planning and carrying out verification and validation of new hardware.
• Working with Manufacturing and Production Engineering to make sure our designs can be built reliably and repeatedly.
• Investigating production issues and supporting component obsolescence and product improvements.
• Reviewing designs and sharing your experience with other engineers across the team.

And because we manufacture and test much of our technology ourselves, you don’t simply hand your design over and never see it again.

You get to see what you’ve designed become a real product.

What we’re looking for

We’re looking for an experienced electronics engineer with a strong foundation in analogue and digital hardware design.

You’ll ideally bring experience in several of the following areas:

• Analogue and mixed-signal electronics.
• Digital electronics, processors and microcontrollers.
• FPGA-based hardware.
• Schematic capture and PCB design using Altium Designer or a comparable professional tool.
• Hardware simulation and modelling.
• EMC-aware design and testing.
• Embedded C for low-level hardware interaction, bring-up and debugging.
• Electronic test, measurement and practical laboratory debugging.
• Taking electronic products from concept through prototype and into manufacture.

Experience with C++, maritime standards such as EN60945, subsea technology or our particular product areas would be useful – but we’re not expecting you to arrive knowing everything about underwater technology.

If you’re a strong electronics hardware engineer with the fundamentals, curiosity and appetite to learn, we’ll help you develop the domain knowledge.

You’ll ideally have a degree in Electronics Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Embedded Systems or a related discipline, although relevant industry experience is equally important to us.

You’ll probably enjoy this role if…

You’re the sort of engineer who wants to understand why something isn’t working rather than simply accepting that it doesn’t.

You still enjoy getting an oscilloscope out.

You can happily disappear into a schematic for an hour but also enjoy bouncing ideas around with software, mechanical and systems engineers.

You care about elegant engineering, but you also understand that eventually somebody has to manufacture it.

And while you’ve built up considerable experience, you’re still curious enough to know there’s always something else to learn.

If that sounds familiar, you’ll probably feel at home here.

Why Sonardyne?

For more than 50 years, Sonardyne has been pioneering underwater technology.

Today our technology is used around the world across offshore energy, ocean science, marine robotics and defence – helping customers navigate, communicate, position and understand what’s happening beneath the surface of the ocean.

For an electronics engineer, that means working on products where the engineering genuinely matters.

You’ll have the opportunity to influence designs, challenge established approaches, introduce new ideas and work alongside specialists across multiple engineering disciplines.

And you’ll be close to the complete product lifecycle – design it, prototype it, test it, improve it, manufacture it and see it operate in the real world.

Our main engineering facility is at Blackbushe, Yateley, with occasional travel to other Sonardyne locations, including our Plymouth trials facility.

Think you could be a good fit?

Please don’t rule yourself out because you don’t tick every single technical box.

Senior Electronics Engineers develop their expertise in different ways. If you’ve got strong electronics fundamentals, substantial hands-on hardware design experience and you’re excited by the idea of applying those skills to complex underwater technology, we’d really like to hear from you.

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