Senior / Lead FPGA Engineer

Job Description

Senior / Lead FPGA Engineer

Wotton under Edge

Salary from ~£45,000 - £65,000 depending on experience

We have multiple opportunities for ambitious FPGA Engineers at Senior and Lead level to join our multidisciplinary engineering team at the forefront of additive manufacturing technology.

Our FPGA platforms are central to the control, sensing, communication and real-time processing capabilities of our next-generation products. Working within Research & Development, you will contribute to the full product lifecycle, from concept and architecture through verification, release to production, and long-term support.

These are hands-on engineering roles, combining FPGA design, verification and hardware bring-up with close collaboration across electronics, software, systems, algorithms and mechanical engineering teams. Depending on experience and grade, you will also provide technical leadership, influence engineering strategy, and mentor developing engineers.

The FPGA frequently interfaces with high-speed digital electronics, embedded processors, sensors and analogue circuitry. As such, a strong appreciation of system-level design and hardware/software interaction is essential.

Key Responsibilities

FPGA Design & Development

• Develop FPGA architectures and RTL designs from concept through to production release.
• Design, implement and maintain high-quality VHDL solutions with a focus on performance, reliability, portability and efficient resource utilisation.
• Perform timing analysis, constraint development, timing closure and design optimisation.
• Implement and verify FPGA functionality in both simulation and on target hardware.
• Develop reusable and maintainable IP blocks and design frameworks for use across multiple projects and product generations.
• Support product sustainment, issue investigation and design improvements throughout the product lifecycle.

Verification & Validation

• Develop robust verification environments using modern methodologies including OSVVM and VUnit.
• Create reusable, self-checking testbenches with measurable verification coverage.
• Define verification strategies, plans and acceptance criteria.
• Drive continuous improvement in simulation, regression testing and automated verification workflows.
• Support hardware validation, debugging and system integration activities.

Systems & Product Development

• Capture, analyse and refine requirements, ensuring clear traceability from customer and system requirements through to implementation and verification.
• Work closely with systems, electronics, software, algorithms and test engineers to deliver integrated solutions.
• Evaluate and implement signal processing, control and embedded algorithms within FPGA architectures.
• Contribute to safety, reliability and compliance activities, including design assurance and audit-ready engineering evidence.
• Produce and maintain high-quality technical documentation, including architecture specifications, interface definitions, verification reports and design rationale.

Technical Leadership

• Provide technical leadership for FPGA development activities across projects.
• Drive engineering excellence through design reviews, code reviews, development standards and best practices.
• Support planning, estimation, technical risk management and project delivery.
• Mentor engineers, graduates and apprentices, helping develop both technical capability and engineering judgement.
• Promote reusable design approaches and continuous improvement across tools, methodologies and processes.

Essential Requirements

Senior FPGA Engineer

• Degree in Electronic Engineering, Physics, Computer Engineering or a related discipline.
• Strong commercial experience developing FPGA solutions using VHDL.
• Solid understanding of digital design principles, including:
• Timing analysis and timing closure
• Clock domain crossing techniques
• Reset architectures
• Pipelining and resource optimisation
• High-speed digital interfaces
• Experience implementing and verifying FPGA designs in simulation and on hardware.
• Understanding of FPGA development tools and design flows.
• Ability to communicate effectively within a multidisciplinary engineering team.

Additional Requirements for Lead FPGA Engineer

• Significant experience architecting complex FPGA-based systems.
• Proven ability to lead FPGA development activities through the full product lifecycle.
• Strong understanding of requirements management, design reviews and engineering governance.
• Experience mentoring engineers and providing technical leadership.
• Demonstrated ability to balance technical excellence with delivery objectives.

Desirable Requirements

• Experience with Intel (Altera) FPGA devices and Quartus development tools.
• Experience of OSVVM, VUnit and modern verification methodologies.
• Familiarity with VS Code, Active-HDL or equivalent simulation environments.
• Knowledge of embedded software development using C, C++ or Python.
• Experience with Git, Azure DevOps and continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) workflows.
• Understanding of DSP, control systems and numerical algorithms.