Hardware Engineer

In this position

We are looking for an experienced Hardware Engineer to own signal integrity (SI) and hardware robustness for high-speed, in-vehicle communication links within Ford's network communications hardware team.

Our team is responsible for ISO Layer 1 and 2 of networking. We work on finding and developing the right networking technologies for Ford’s next‑generation electrical architecture. This means introducing new solutions and tweaking existing ones to help keep overall system costs down while ensuring electrical robustness for automotive use.

• Conduct design reviews of ECU circuit designs to ensure they meet industry standards and automotive requirements for SI, EMC, and electrical robustness.
• Run simulations to catch potential issues early, and follow up with lab measurements to validate.
• Define SI budgets for different parts of the system (board, cable, connector, etc.), keeping jitter, noise, crosstalk, and EMI/EMC in mind.
• Formulate board-level requirements for layout, interconnects, routing, and components.
• Create design verification test methods and run tests based on industry standards and internal requirements.
• Lead functional failure root-cause analysis and corrective actions for prototypes and production vehicles.
• Lead component-level qualification of networking components for use in Ford products by reviewing EMI/EMC, interoperability, and other conformance reports.
• Work closely with other Product Development teams (like EMC, Electrical Distribution Systems, and Vehicle Validation) to ensure SI is considered throughout the whole process.
• Provide technical guidance to Product Development teams on feasibility, design alternatives, and design oversight for in-vehicle network implementations.
• Collaborate with software and firmware teams during hardware bring-up and testing.
• Build strong relationships with silicon, cable, and connector vendors to evaluate and introduce emerging technologies.
• Contribute to industry standards efforts to reduce component cost, improve test automation, and address common automotive challenges in collaboration with industry experts.

• Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering or a similar technical field.
• 3+ years of experience in electronic hardware design, mainly focusing on complex high-speed digital and mixed-signal designs.
• 2+ years working with SI simulation or PCB design tools (e.g., Altium Designer, Mentor Graphics, Cadence Allegro, Hyper Lynx, SIwave, Polar Instruments).
• 2+ years of hands-on lab experience using equipment like oscilloscopes, Vector Network Analyzers (VNA), Time Domain Reflectometers (TDR), and doing circuit board rework.
• Familiarity with standard automotive communication interfaces (CAN, LIN, Ser Des, Ethernet).
• A solid grasp of transmission line theory, S-parameters, bit error rate (BER) testing, crosstalk, characteristic impedance, eye diagrams, and time-domain analysis.
• Good understanding of EMC/EMI principles in automotive settings.
• Experience with high-reliability electronics for high-volume production, including using DFMEA and Worst-Case Analysis (WCA).

• PhD with 3+ years of relevant hardware/SI experience, or Master’s degree with 7+ years of relevant hardware/SI experience.
• 5+ years of experience with SI simulation and PCB design tools.
• Strong background in transmission line and electromagnetic theory.
• Specific automotive networking experience (e.g., 10
  
  BASE-T1S, 100/1000
  
  BASE-T1, Multi-Gig T1, GMSL/FPD-Link, CAN-FD, LIN).
• Familiarity with how typical vehicle electrical architectures are built and the automotive development process.
• Experience with networking hardware architectures, topologies, and protocols.
• Experience with EMC/EMI standards and testing (like Ford FMC
  1278, ISO 7637, CISPR 25).
• Experience capturing and writing technical requirements and specifications.
• Comfort using vehicle diagnostic tools to troubleshoot network issues.
• Prior involvement with standards organizations like IEEE, SAE, ASA, or the OPEN Alliance.
• You're comfortable taking ownership of loosely defined goals, asking the right questions to get clarity, and working well with others to get the job done.

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