Senior Electronics Engineer (High-Speed Digital / SoC Board Design) | Defence UAS | South East England, On-site
Are you a hardware engineer who has taken processor and SoC boards from architecture to production, and want your next design to actually fly?
I'm recruiting on behalf of a fast-growing defence technology company building electric propulsion systems for unmanned aircraft. They design and manufacture in-house in Europe, from motors and power electronics to firmware, and even own their PCB fabrication. As customers move away from Chinese-sourced electronics, they are building a trusted, vertically integrated alternative. They are moving from prototype to volume production, and this is a chance to join a small team early.
The role
You will own the digital side of the hardware, reporting to the Head of Electronic Hardware. It is a hands-on design role with no direct reports.
First up is a home-grown flight controller to replace the Chinese reference designs the industry relies on. After that, the products get harder:
- Companion compute running visual-inertial odometry at frame rate on a few watts
- Imaging payloads with LWIR cores, optics and video paths
- Navigation that survives GNSS jamming and spoofing, including terrain-relative and star tracking
- Radio links that adapt modulation and hopping in the field
What you’ll do
- Design processor and SoC boards end to end: device selection, power architecture, boot, debug access
- Route DDR and high-speed serial interfaces to meet timing, with full stackup and impedance control
- Own signal and power integrity
- Integrate IMUs, magnetometers, barometers and GNSS receivers, and design the front ends around them
- Design radio and antenna interfaces
- Design for EMC alongside a demanding motor inverter noise source
- Bring boards up on the bench and define the hardware/firmware interface
- Work with power electronics and mechanical teams, and carry designs through to manufacture and test
What you bring
- 8 to 10 years of hands-on electronics design, with boards that reached production or a qualified prototype
- Practical SI/PI: stackup, controlled impedance, decoupling, return paths
- Mixed-signal and sensor integration in electrically noisy environments
- RF/connectivity: radio modules, transceivers, antenna matching
- PCB layout in Altium Designer (or equivalent) on dense multi-layer boards
- Bench bring-up with debug probes, scopes, and logic/protocol analysers
- Experience defining hardware interfaces with firmware engineers
Nice to have
- Development boards or reference designs for a semiconductor company (a strong fit)
- Flight control, avionics, robotics or other safety-relevant embedded platforms
- Aerospace/defence electronics, DEF STAN 59-411 or MIL-STD-461 experience
- GNSS integration, CAN/DroneCAN, Ethernet/USB at hardware level
- Embedded vision, SoM integration, or edge inference hardware
- Formal high-speed simulation experience
- Degree in Electronic or Electrical Engineering
This is an on-site role in South East England.
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Senior Electronic Engineer in Reading employer: SR2
Join a forward-thinking engineering company in Woking, where your contributions as a Senior Electronics Engineer will directly impact the development of cutting-edge technology for industrial and autonomous applications. With a strong emphasis on employee growth, a collaborative work culture, and significant investment in innovation, this is an excellent opportunity to be part of a team that values your expertise and encourages you to take ownership of your projects. Enjoy the benefits of working in a dynamic environment that fosters creativity and offers a clear path for career advancement.
