FPGA Engineer

FPGA Engineer - Ulverston Hybrid or Remote (3/4 days on site per calandar month, Tuesday to Thursday ) which is fully expensed - Travel & Accommodation 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'll enjoy solving a variety of technical challenges in a culture where everyone trusts each other. You'll gain deeper job satisfaction, variety, better rewards and a great quality of life inside and outside of work. You'll 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.

We are an exclusive partner to this exciting company having worked with them successfully for 15+ years.

As a Firmware Engineer, FPGA Engineer you'll love working in a high-technology business dedicated to providing the most reliable imaging and acoustic equipment for use in underwater applications.

You'll 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'll 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'll 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'll do:

1. 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. 2. 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). 3. 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. 4. 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:

o Integrated Logic Analysers (ILA)

o Oscilloscopes

o Spectrum analysers

Support acoustic tank testing and sea trials where required. 5. 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. 6. 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'll need:

Strong proficiency in VHDL and/or Verilog

Experience with Xilinx (AMD) or Intel FPGAs

Strong understanding of:

Digital signal processing, DSP

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 are well established, stable, and specialise 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. TPBN1_UKTJ