JOB SPECIFICATION – Senior FPGA / DSP Engineer

(Permanent – Bristol – Onsite)

Senior FPGA Engineer (RFSoC / DSP)

Bristol | 5 Days Onsite | Salary Negotiable (£80k+ for the right candidate)

An innovative and fast-growing RF sensing technology company in Bristol is seeking a Senior FPGA Engineer to play a key technical leadership role within a high-performance engineering team.

This company delivers cutting-edge distributed sensing systems used in border protection, subsea monitoring, rail infrastructure, and environmental sensing. Their products operate at the intersection of RF acquisition, real-time FPGA processing, and AI-driven analytics.

This is a hands-on role for an ambitious engineer who thrives on solving complex technical challenges and wants to influence both architecture and engineering methodology.

The Technology

RFSoC (integrated ADC acquisition)
Heavy front-end FPGA signal processing (performance-critical)
High channel count acoustic data streaming
Integration with NVIDIA platforms for machine learning

You will work on real-world deployed systems where performance, determinism, and signal fidelity matter.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement high-performance FPGA architectures using Xilinx RFSoC

• Develop and optimize DSP algorithms in FPGA fabric

• Work closely with RF, hardware, and ML teams

• Drive improvements in development methodology and process

• Mentor and support a small, experienced engineering team

• Contribute to system-level architecture decisions

• Participate in hardware bring-up and bench testing

This role is approximately 80% hands-on technical work with additional leadership and process ownership responsibilities.

Required Experience

• Experience with Xilinx RFSoC and/or Software Defined Radio systems

• Strong understanding of DSP fundamentals (must understand the math behind the algorithms)

• Experience implementing high-resource, performance-critical FPGA designs

• Ability to optimize for throughput, latency, and hardware constraints

• Experience working closely with hardware in lab/bench environments

• Eligible to obtain SC clearance

Desirable Experience

• MATLAB for DSP modeling

• Multi-channel acquisition systems

• High-speed data interfaces

• Experience in defense, RF systems, or sensing applications

• Experience improving engineering processes or mentoring engineers

Working Environment

• 5 days per week onsite in Bristol (required due to hardware interaction)

• High-performing, technically strong small team

• Direct impact on real-world deployed systems

• Opportunity to shape technical direction in a growing business

Compensation

Salary is negotiable and flexible depending on experience. Exceptional candidates may also be considered for long-term incentive options.