Alpha Data | FPGA
Senior Mixed Digital & RF/Microwave Electronics Design Engineer (AD-ENG15)
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Senior Mixed Digital & RF/Microwave Electronics Design Engineer
Vacancy Code: AD-ENG15
Who We Are
For over three decades, Alpha Data has empowered leading aerospace, defence, and datacenter customers with RF/analog, and high speed digital compute solutions based around AMD FPGAs. From our locations in the USA and UK, we bring the inherent cost savings and accelerated time-to-market of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) products to customers around the world. Our highly skilled design team also specializes in modified COTS solutions to meet our customer’s unique and challenging requirements, ensuring we succeed together!
The Role
We are seeking a senior engineer to design high-performance embedded products combining RF/microwave, analog, and high-speed digital circuitry, based around AMD Versal RF and adaptive SoC platforms. The role is hands-on, spans the full product lifecycle, and requires a broad skillset. This includes expertise in RF/analog design (e.g. impedance matching, simulation, and lab validation) combined with experience in high-speed digital PCB design (e.g. DDR5, 200G ethernet, and PCIe Gen6) and the ability to merge these varied disciplines into a dense multilayer PCB while accounting for the associated power and signal integrity challenges.
In addition to electronics design, the role involves: hardware bring-up, characterisation, FPGA design, creating software for validation, supporting production, and customer communications.
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Responsibilities
- Design and develop mixed-signal PCBs combining RF/analog (to ~18 GHz) with high-speed digital interfaces (e.g. DDR5, SERDES) around AMD FPGA platforms.
- Perform RF design and simulation (e.g. matching networks, transmission lines, baluns) and validate designs using simulation and lab equipment (3D EM simulation, VNA, spectrum analyser, signal generator).
- Take ownership of board-level design from schematic through layout support, bring-up, and characterisation.
- Work closely with PCB layout engineers on high-density, multilayer designs with tight signal and power integrity requirements.
- Debug and diagnose hardware issues at board and system level, including RF performance, high-speed interfaces, and power-related problems.
- Develop FPGA designs and software tools (e.g. Vivado, TCL, Python) to support hardware validation and test.
- Develop and execute comprehensive test plans, test cases, and validation procedures for hardware prototypes and production units.
- Collaborate with firmware, software, and mechanical teams to deliver complete, systems.
- Support production and customer-facing activities, including issue investigation and technical documentation.
Required Qualifications
- Bachelor’s, Master’s degree, or PhD in Electrical Engineering, or a related field.
- 8+ years of experience in board-level hardware design with a strong focus on analog/RF.
- Proficiency with simulation, schematic capture, and PCB layout tools (Keysight ADS, OrCAD CIS, and Cadence Allegro).
- Demonstrated experience with analog RF and high-speed digital design principles, including signal integrity and power integrity considerations.
- Experience with hardware testing, debugging, and validation using lab equipment (VNA, signal generators, spectrum analyzers, oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, etc).
- Excellent problem-solving skills and a meticulous attention to detail.
- Ability to work independently and collaboratively within a cross-functional team environment.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills.
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Preferred Qualifications
- 15+ years of experience in analog and digital hardware design.
- Strong understanding of Direct RF FPGA architectures, development flows, and design techniques (VHDL/Verilog).
- Previous design experience with AMD RFSoC
- Experience with AMD FPGA devices and associated development tools (e.g., Vivado and Vitis).
- Experience with x86 and ARM processing architectures.
- Knowledge of industry standards such as VPX, PCIe, DDRx, Ethernet, and various communication protocols.
- Experience in designing for harsh environments, including ruggedized (e.g., aerospace and defense).
- Experience with scripting languages (e.g., Python, Tcl, windows batch) for automation of design and test flows.
- Experience supporting products through the entire lifecycle, from concept to end-of-life.
How to Apply
To apply for this vacancy please complete our application form, which can be found here.
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