Position – Technical Team Lead: DSP Hardware

Role Summary

The Technical Team Lead: DSP Hardware is responsible for technical delivery and providing tactical leadership and support to a team of engineers and developers within the domain of Hardware-based Digital Signal Processing. The role bridges the gap between technical execution and strategic group goals, ensuring technical excellence and driving successful delivery of projects.

• Provide tactical technical leadership and support to a team of engineers and developers within DSP Hardware.
• Provide technical expertise and input to support development of long‑term group strategy aligned with organisational goals.
• Lead and manage design, architecture, development and implementation of systems and projects in the domain, following best practices.
• Provide technical mentorship and guidance to the team.
• Manage technical resources across multiple projects to ensure execution and delivery, including resource loading, task breakdown, assignment, prioritisation and blocker removal.
• Interact with internal and external stakeholders to understand needs, provide feedback on project status and assist with technical problem solving.
• Support people‑management functions, providing inputs to performance management, recruitment and staff development.
• Architectural design and/or implementation of DSP products and applications for Radio Astronomy digital signal processing systems that meet functional and performance requirements.
• Design products incorporating digital signal processing system design, FPGA development, software development, and high‑speed data transport.
• Support analysis, definition, integration, verification and validation of DSP products at various system levels.
• Develop software to control, monitor, debug and support operation of DSP products.
• Drive systems engineering processes for product development through the entire lifecycle from conceptualisation to decommissioning.
• Support deployment, maintenance, upgrades, operation and decommissioning of DSP products.
• Contribute to generation of technical documentation supporting delivery and handover of products.
• Participate in R&D initiatives to develop novel ideas for future products and continuous development of the group.

• Qualification: B.Tech (Eng) (NQF
  7) in Electrical, Electronics or Mechatronics Engineering with 15+ years relevant experience OR
  
  B.Eng/B.Sc (Eng) (NQF
  8) with 13+ years OR MSc / M.Eng (NQF
  9) with 10+ years OR PhD (NQF 10) with 7+ years.
• Experience: Leading/ managing a technical team or complex project across a significant portion of the lifecycle; communicating with stakeholders at various levels; mentoring peers; owning technical architecture and decision-making; DSP or FPGA engineering with complete system design; building signal‑processing applications for radio astronomy; parallel processing on FPGA; accelerated DSP algorithms; system requirements analysis; technical documentation; proficiency in Python, C++ or Matlab;
  
  workflow and issue management tools (JIRA); source control (Git).
• Knowledge: Radio astronomy instrumentation (spectrometers, correlators, beamformers); multi‑rate and parallel DSP operations; high‑speed data transport (Ethernet); FPGA firmware design and tools or GPGPU/HPC programming; monitoring of DSP applications; systems engineering or software design life cycle;
  Linux; communication of technical concepts; technical leadership; translating requirements into tasks; defining best practices; resource and project management.

• Desire to continuously learn, solve problems, acquire new skills with cutting‑edge technology.
• Clear, methodical problem‑solving approach.
• High attention to detail, excellent organisation.
• Good written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to effectively lead a technical team.
• Ability to transfer knowledge to others.
• Eagerness to develop technical specialization.
• Willingness to travel locally and internationally.

06 July 2026

The NRF offers a challenging career and a competitive remuneration package commensurate with qualifications and experience.

The NRF is committed to employment equity and redress and the appointment to the position will be made in line with the NRF Employment Equity Plan.

The NRF reserves the right not to make an appointment.

Correspondence will be sent to short‑listed candidates only.