Senior FPGA/Firmware Engineer – ID 660

Location: Reston, Virginia
Eligibility: U.S. citizenship and the ability to obtain a security clearance are required.

The Opportunity

Join an advanced engineering organization developing FPGA-based electronics for airborne and space-deployed optical systems. This position supports sophisticated laser, lidar, sensing, and free-space communications programs serving government and commercial missions.

You will take ownership of firmware development from early system definition through laboratory integration and final qualification. The work is highly collaborative, bringing together specialists in digital hardware, embedded software, systems engineering, and electro-optics.

What You’ll Do

• Develop FPGA architectures and production-quality RTL for electro-optical payloads, laser instrumentation, and space-related systems.
• Translate system requirements, interface specifications, schematics, and functional diagrams into detailed firmware designs.
• Carry designs through coding, simulation, synthesis, implementation, timing closure, verification, and release.
• Create testbenches and simulation environments that thoroughly exercise designs and confirm requirements compliance.
• Integrate FPGA firmware with custom electronics, optical assemblies, embedded software, and complete system platforms.
• Troubleshoot designs in the laboratory using hardware-in-the-loop setups, diagnostic equipment, and interface-analysis tools.
• Work within short, iterative development cycles that emphasize frequent integration, incremental verification, and rapid technical feedback.
• Design for demanding mission environments using appropriate reliability methods, fault-management strategies, and radiation-mitigation techniques.
• Participate in technical reviews, peer code reviews, risk assessments, and engineering documentation.
• Help improve FPGA development practices through automated builds, testing, linting, regression analysis, and controlled releases.
• Share technical knowledge and provide guidance to other members of the firmware team.

Required Background

• Bachelor’s or master’s degree in electrical engineering, computer engineering, or a closely related discipline.
• At least seven years of relevant FPGA or firmware-development experience.
• Strong RTL design skills using VHDL.
• Experience using SystemVerilog for verification and testbench development.
• Practical experience with digital signal processing, precision timing, lidar, or optical-communications modem technology.
• Familiarity with FPGA families and toolchains from AMD/Xilinx, Microchip, and Lattice.
• Demonstrated ability to develop simulations and verification environments for complex FPGA designs.
• Experience working directly with board-level hardware engineers during development, bring-up, integration, and testing.
• Ability to interpret electrical schematics, functional block diagrams, and interface-control information.
• Experience implementing high-speed data interfaces such as GTY/GTM transceivers, JESD204B/C, Ethernet, or SpaceWire.
• Knowledge of common board-level protocols, including SPI, I²C, UART, and LVDS.
• Experience integrating memory technologies such as DDR3, DDR4, QDR, or FRAM.
• Familiarity with GitHub-based development and automated FPGA workflows, including code review, linting, synthesis, regression testing, timing analysis, bitstream creation, version control, and release tagging.

Helpful Additional Experience

• Python programming for test automation, build processes, or engineering-data analysis.
• Linux development environments, shell scripting, Docker, or other automation technologies.
• FPGA development for high-reliability aerospace or space programs.
• Triple Modular Redundancy and other fault-tolerant RTL design methods.
• Embedded C or C++ development for microcontrollers.
• Visual Studio Code or comparable development environments.

About the Work

This organization designs advanced laser and electro-optical technology for aerospace, defense, scientific, and commercial applications. Its systems support areas such as atmospheric measurement, laser communications, remote sensing, and lidar. Engineers have the opportunity to contribute to technically challenging programs for customers that include NASA and the U.S. Department of Defense.