VHDL Engineer

What are we looking for in our VHDL Engineer?

Role Purpose 

We wish to reruit an experienced VHDL engineer who has a good working knowledge of electronics, control systems, and digital signal processing.  It would be advantageous if the engineer can also write basic Windows PC test harnesses as necessary to prove out developed VHDL.

The role demands an engineer to be creative, analytical, familiar with development processes and have good experience of VHDL development and build tools. The candidate must have a pro-active approach and work well within multifunctional project teams. The role requires the person to actively drive design quality and performance by championing a peer review process, undertaking failure mode analysis, and planning suitable risk mitigation activities.

Responsibilities

The successful candidate will be responsible for the design and development of VHDL to support the development of our instruments, including:

• The VHDL design within a project and co-ordination of activities with other engineers and designers as required.
• Understanding the electronics, VHDL and embedded software requirements for new instrumentation and developing a functional specification for these sub-systems.
• Development and introduction of innovative designs incorporating new technologies where appropriate.
• Testing of new ideas and concepts either by simulation or prototyping.
• Working within an interdisciplinary project team to resolve any issues involving the VHDL systems performance, development time schedules and resourcing requirements.
• Designing and analysing VHDL for complex programmable devices and systems of devices.
• Driving the development of prototypes, performance and verification testing.
• Supporting compliance, regulatory and quality requirements related to design activities.
• Engaging in all phases of new product introduction, including concept, architecture documentation, design, prototype, test, supplier interfaces, and manufacturing introduction.
• Conceptualisation, implementation and verification of complete instrument systems.
• Design releases - technical product documentation.
• Development of low-level diagnostic tools for engineering (and possibly service) usage.

Process:

• Working within our product development process.
• Conducting design reviews.
• Producing the required level of documentation.
• Driving continuous improvement of the VHDL engineering elements of our processes.

VHDL Engineers work in a multi-disciplinary project team with other engineers; outside vendors; and individuals from other internal departments (procurement, manufacturing and marketing).

A strong emphasis is placed on the ability to deliver systems to specification, on time and within their cost target.

Engineers work within a structured development process designed to manage risk effectively.

Qualifications & Experience:

Required:

• Bachelor of Science or equivalent in Electronic Engineering.
• Proven ability to take VHDL designs from concept through to full manufacturing.
• Ability to test out ideas and concepts using simulation and hands-on prototyping.
• Ability to code using VHDL.
• Experience with Xilinx Vivado and Vitis tools, together with Zynq-7000 SoC.
• Ability to use VHDL development tools to troubleshoot own or existing designs.
• Experience with general digital hardware designs using glue logic and programmable devices such as CPLDs, FPGAs, ASICs and their programming tools.
• Excellent communication skills: both written and verbal.
• Ability to engage and work closely with members of a cross-functional team, particularly in electronics, systems and software.
• Self-motivation: showing initiative, attention to detail, and bias for action.
• Ability to assess technical risk and to formulate effective risk management strategies including analysis and evaluation.
• Ability to plan projects, providing timescale estimates and allocating/prioritising tasks accordingly.

Advantageous:

• Experience with the Microsoft Visual Studio tools or similar for developing test harnesses using C/C++/C#.
• Experience of Ethernet / USB / Serial / Bluetooth LE comms.
• Experience in Decimation, Filtering, DSP functions.
• Interest in physics/optics.
• Optics, electronics, or thermal analysis experience.
• Experience with source control tools such as Git, Perforce, SVN.
• Experience in developing high precision designs.
• Experience of product development within a company making some form of measurement instrumentation.
• Familiarity with product design methodologies such as a life cycle model.
• Scientific background or interests.
• Some business knowledge.