Lead Engineer - FPGA and Test Development; PCBA

Job Description Summary

Responsible for designing, developing, and testing FPGA applications on PCBAs for Wind Turbines, specifically for blade Pitch or power frequency converters. FPGAs are used to implement fast control loops for power semiconductor control and protection; standard and proprietary communication protocols; and feedback / I/O functions.

Engineer in this role will also support PCBA test and validation. This will include type tests as part of the board design cycle, and design of functional tests for production environmental use. Testing may also include some Failure Analysis (FA) from fielded units.

• Familiarity with PCBA (hardware and firmware) testing, National Instruments LabVIEW/testing with extension to factory support (testing and troubleshooting) at PCBA, cabinet and Wind farm levels.
• Own maintenance of existing FPGA designs including Verilog source code and simulation test benches.
• Lead design of new FPGA logic features including Finite State Machine design, communication protocol implementation, interfaces to third‑party sensors and hardware, and communication interfaces to PLCs. Design and implement simulation test benches for new designs.
• Partner with converter or Pitch PCBA Hardware engineer to develop requirements and concepts for PCBAs, including logic device selection.
• Participate in board bring‑up activities for new prototype hardware.
• Own maintenance of existing LabVIEW code and functional test hardware, including support of international teams at contract manufacturing facilities.
• Partner with converter PCBA Hardware engineer to specify, design, and implement functional test fixtures and LabVIEW code for new PCBA designs.
• Partner with converter Systems engineer for design of power converter and power system validation facilities or Partner with pitch system engineer for design of validation facilities
• Support technical reviews to evaluate new product requirement specifications for completeness and clarity for testing. Provide feedback for constant process and product improvement.
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills, including ability to provide technical mentoring to junior engineers. Ability to understand wider system- and business-level context of design & validation work.
• Architects, designs and/or programs/develops a small module or a large component, feature, set of feature, whole feature area or entire embedded software product. May be responsible for the creation of an entire product.

• Bachelor's degree from an accredited university or college in computer science or engineering
• At least 6 years of experience in FPGA design including Finite State Machine design, communication protocol implementation, interfaces to third‑party sensors and hardware, and communication interfaces to PLCs
• 2-3 years of PCBA test validation experience through failure analysis or manufacturing tests

• Familiarity with Verilog & System Verilog, including application code design & implementation, and testbench design & implementation.
• Familiarity with timing constraints for FPGA design.
• Familiarity with AMD Xilinx, Lattice, and/or Intel Altera FPGAs, and associated development & debugging tools (Vivado, etc.)
• Familiarity with National Instruments LabVIEW software and NI test hardware
• Familiarity with C/C++ programming language
• Familiarity with common serial communication protocols & interfaces: SPI, I2C, UART, ethernet, etc.
• Ability to read schematics & interpret PCBA layouts. Cadence, Altium, KiCad, etc. experience is a plus.
• Understanding of electrical and thermal design aspects for power electronics systems
• Strong oral and written communication skills. Ability to document, plan, market, and execute programs.
• Experience designing and testing power electronic systems through product validation.
• Experience with instrumentation and measurement of power converters
• Demonstrated project leadership capability.
• Demonstrated ability to meet goals and objectives.
• Effective technical documentation skills
• Effective communication and presentation skills
• Proven interpersonal and leadership skills.

This role requires access to U.S.…