Staff FPGA Design Engineer

The journey to space starts with engines.  

Ursa Major was founded to bring a new model to space access: one in which every link in an enormous value chain isn’t limited by those around it. We design rocket engines and propulsion solutions.

Our products and technologies require an extraordinary team. A team that will mold tomorrow’s technologies while deploying today’s best. We are an intrinsically motivated team that has a passion for solving problems and empowering each other every day to develop our skills, knowing that there is always room for growth.

Our advanced aerospace and defense systems depend on reliable, high-performance avionics to ensure mission success. As a Staff Electrical Engineer, you will work with cross-functional design and development teams to architect, design, and verify embedded electronic hardware for a wide range of flight-critical systems, including batteries, power distribution units, guidance, navigation and control (GNC) components, flight termination systems, safe and arm devices, propulsion control, telemetry and other vehicle electronics.  In this role, you will lead the development of circuit card assemblies (CCAs) and FPGA-based hardware that interface with sensors, actuators, power systems, and high-speed communication buses. You will be responsible for hardware design from concept through verification, ensuring designs meet demanding aerospace and defense performance, reliability, and environmental requirements. A strong background in mixed-signal electronics, FPGA design, and hardware development for harsh environments is essential. You will also help define and execute hardware verification and validation strategies using industry best practices and customer requirements.

Responsibilities:

• Develop mixed-signal designs and shepherd them through the full product life-cycle, including requirements definition, design, development, qualification and release to production.
• Support avionics architecture trade studies, analyses, performance characterization and specification, device selection, schematic generation, and hardware test.
• Perform de-rating analysis, worst case circuit analysis, FMECA, and system reliability analysis.
• Support definition and implementation of hardware to software interfaces to implement control law and automated test functions.
• Support risk analyses, design for test/manufacture/cost, and root-cause analysis of test discrepancies.
• Architect and generate ASIC/FPGA RTL code
• Generate test cases and run simulations to verify functionality of ASIC/FPGA code
• Complete FPGA synthesis and resolve all errors/warnings
• Complete FPGA place and route and ensure sufficient timing margin through STA
• Complete electrical checkout of circuit cards/FPGAs for requirement verification/design validation
• Prepare materials for peer reviews and major design reviews
• Support rocket engine testing and ground support as necessary

Requirements:

• B.S. in Electrical Engineering with 10+ years of direct experience in electronics hardware and ASIC/FPGA development
• Demonstrated experience in delivering flight avionics for aircraft, launch vehicles, or other space applications.
• Understanding of analog/digital filtering, mixed-signal circuit design, analysis, and test.
• Knowledge of signal integrity, power, grounding, and general board layout principles

• Working knowledge of EMI/EMC practices and; MIL-461, DO-160, or FCC compliance
• Experienced in a hardware description language such as VHDL, Verilog or SystemVerilog
• Ability to use Python, TCL, or other high-level language for FPGA simulation and hardware test
• Experience with ASIC/FPGA timing closure and place and route
• Experience with Xilinx or Microsemi FPGAs
• Experience with electronic hardware, reading schematics and using hardware test and debugging equipment

Desired Experience:

• Direct experience in launch vehicle avionics systems integration
• Graduate degree in related engineering or technical field with 15+ years of direct experience in electronics hardware development
• Understanding of sensor and actuator technologies including: RTD’s, Pressure Transducers, DC brushless motors, Solenoid valves, Thermocouples, Hydraulic servo valves, LVDT, RVDT, Rotary/Linear Encoders.
• Demonstrated expertise designing Class 3 board assemblies
• Utilizing IPC and NASA-STD-8739.n (or similar) standards.
• Proficiency using Altium (or similar tools) to design complex boards; and experience working with external board manufacturing and assembly vendors.
• A desire to design mission critical hardware for flight applications.
• Working knowledge of high-reliability, radiation-tolerant, radiation-hardened flight hardware intended for high altitude and space environments.
• Proficiency with scripting; programming and analysis/modeling tools: Python, Linux/Windows shell scripting; assembly language, C, C++; MATLAB / Simulink / SPICE (or similar)
• Exposure to designing safety or mission critical aerospace flight hardware compliant with DO-254.
• Experience with SystemVerilog UVM, Cocotb or other PLI/DPI based co-simulation environment

Colorado law requires us to tell you the base compensation range of this role, which is $150,000 - $180,000, determined by your education, experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities. What we can’t quantify for you are the exciting challenges, supportive team, and amazing culture we enjoy. 

Classification: Full-time Exempt