Senior Firmware Engineer

Currently seeking a Senior Firmware Engineer for a reliable and long standing organization leading the development of laser and electro-optic systems for the aerospace community with key contributions to lasers for atmospheric sensing laser communications and lidar sensors for NASA DoD and commercial customers.

We are looking for an experienced Engineer to contribute to the development of products on our Research and Development Division in Herndon VA. As part of our R&D division you would join our firmware team to develop integrate and test our firmware products in spaced-based electro-optical systems.

This is a long-term and permanent opportunity located onsite in Herndon VA.

No clearance required.

Essential Job Duties

• Lead and contribute to firmware architecture and implementation for space-based electro-optical payloads and laser systems
• Perform end-to-end firmware development lifecycle: from requirements analysis through design coding simulation verification and validation
• Collaborate closely with hardware systems software and optical engineers in cross-functional teams to define interfaces resolve design issues and ensure seamless system integration
• Participate in task-based iterative development cycles incorporating rapid feedback frequent integration points and incremental testing to meet mission reliability goals
• Conduct lab-based debugging hardware-in-the-loop testing and system-level validation using diagnostic tools and protocols
• Support peer code reviews knowledge sharing and continuous improvement of development processes and best practices
• Apply high-reliability and space-grade techniques (e.g. fault tolerance radiation mitigation) in a collaborative team-oriented environment
• Contribute to documentation design reviews and risk identification throughout the product lifecycle.

Experience and Expertise Required

• 7 years relevant experience
• BS/MS in EE or equivalent
• Expertise with firmware engineering VHDL (RTL) System Verilog (Testing)
• Expertise with Digital Signal Processing precision timing optical comms (modems) LIDAR
• Experience with Xilinx Microchip and Lattice FPGAs and their associated development tools
• Experience developing test benches and running simulations to exercise the design and to verify compliance
• Experience interfacing and working with hardware designers during development integration and test phases
• Experience using schematics and block diagrams as inputs for firmware design
• Experience in high-speed serial links: GTY/GTM JESD204B/C Ethernet SpaceWire
• Experience in standard peripheral interfaces: SPI I2C UART LVDS etc.
• Experience in memory interfaces: DDR3/4 QDR FRAM etc.
• Experience with GitHub CI/CD for FPGA flows code reviews automated linting synthesis regression testing timing closure bitstream generation release tagging