Senior FPGA Engineer II

Rocket Lab’s Optical Systems division solves mission-critical space domain and Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) challenges for Department of Defense (DoD) and Intelligence Community (IC) customers. Our vision is to revolutionize the space-based payload market with innovative and novel designs for space, terrestrial, and airborne environments.

As a Senior FPGA Engineer II based at our Optical Systems sites in Littleton, CO, you will have the opportunity to support Tranche 3 of the U.S. Space Development Agency's (SDA) Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA) using the latest FPGA technologies including Xilinx to support advanced Electro-Optical (EO/IR) technology.

• Work with the hardware design team on requirements.
• Complete FPGA logic design, coding, simulation, and testing.
• Support hardware and software development teams in bring‑up and test of products.
• Provide subject-matter expertise regarding design and automated test development procedures to customers and production support team.
• Perform research and analysis of data, such as customer proposed specifications, datasheets, or manuals to determine design approach and/or feasibility.
• Execute debugging of the design in the lab.
• Perform synthesis, implementation, and timing analysis.

• Bachelor’s degree in computer engineering or electrical engineering or equivalent discipline with 8+ years of experience.
• Experience in FPGA firmware design with VHDL.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. Government Security Clearance.

• Experience with Xilinx/AMD Versal architecture.
• Experience with FPGAs and embedded systems in a radiation environment, including SEU/SEL impact and mitigation.
• Experience in FPGA- or ASIC-based image processing algorithms.
• Experience in both creating IP from scratch in RTL and integrating existing IP into RTL and block designs.
• Familiarity with C, Python or MATLAB and/or experience translating algorithms from a scripted language to HDL.
• Experience with software interfaces including interrupts and DMA.
• Experience with DDR4, Aurora, and high-speed transceiver design and verification.
• Familiarity with AXI Stream and AXI Memory Mapped interfaces.
• PCB design and schematic capture and layout with tools such as Altium Designer.
• Active TS/SCI security clearance.

This position may require prolonged periods of sitting, standing, walking, computer work, and occasional exposure to moderate levels of noise, dust, and fumes in production areas.