PerkinElmer – Firmware Engineer

Responsibilities

Location Seer Green, BuckinghamshireGBJob ID JR-031424

The R&D group in Seer Green is seeking an additional Firmware Design Engineer. The group consists of 16 people who are focused on the development of scientific instrumentation. We are a multi-disciplinary team responsible for developing new products, from concept through to manufacture, and supporting manufacturing with ongoing product lines.  

Our product responsibilities encompass a range of high precision optical and thermal analysis instrumentation, manufactured in our factory in Wales. Due to the complex nature of the instrumentation, there may be multiple embedded processors used within each design requiring firmware to control items such as motors, lasers, light sources, heaters and Peltiers. All firmware development is done in house. Due to the high-performance nature of the equipment, it is often very challenging to achieve the required precision, stability, speed and cost performance goals which can add extra challenges into the firmware design and operation.

The group strives to deliver good quality designs within an agreed predetermined time frame. We feel that an important factor in achieving this goal is the implementation of a structured program of analysis, modelling and evaluation designed to identify problems early in the development process. There is an emphasis on ‘quality by design’ and up-front analysis as opposed to design evolution.

We use a range of firmware development tools such as Xilinx Vivado (targeting Zynq SOC parts) and IAR (targeting STM32 processors) and are adopting a development process aimed at risk identification and management through a framework of technical and planning reviews.

We wish to recruit a firmware engineer who has a good working knowledge of hardware (including electronics), control systems, and digital signal processing and can also write basic Windows PC test harnesses as necessary to prove out firmware interfaces. The ideal candidate should have good working knowledge of real-time operating systems, build systems, and best-practice embedded design.

The role demands an engineer to be creative, analytical, familiar with development processes and have good experience of firmware IDEs and build tools. The candidate must have a pro-active approach and work well within multifunctional project teams. The role requires the person to actively drive design quality and performance by championing a peer review process, undertaking failure mode analysis, and planning suitable risk mitigation activities.

Responsibilities

• The successful candidate will be responsible for the design and development of embedded firmware to support software components and low-level communications of the instruments, including:
• The embedded software design within a project and co-ordination of activities with other engineers and designers as required.
• Understanding the electronics and embedded software requirements for new instrumentation and developing a functional specification for these sub-systems.
• Development and introduction of innovative designs incorporating new technologies where appropriate.
• Testing of new ideas and concepts either by simulation or prototyping.
• Working within an interdisciplinary project team to resolve any issues involving the firmware systems performance, development time schedules and resourcing requirements.
• Supporting existing products, documenting changes and improvements.
• Designing and analysing firmware for complex programmable devices and systems of devices.
• Driving the development of prototypes, performance and verification testing.
• Supporting compliance, regulatory and quality requirements related to design activities.
• Engaging in all phases of new product introduction, including concept, architecture documentation, design, prototype, test, supplier interfaces, and manufacturing introduction.
• Conceptualisation, implementation and verification of complete instrument systems.
• Design releases – technical product documentation (firmware architecture and design development & test specifications).
• Transferring firmware to manufacturing, developing firmware download tools, troubleshooting and supporting ramp up.
• Development of low level diagnostic tools for engineering (and possibly service) usage.
• Support of Manufacturing and Field:
• Troubleshooting and problem resolution.
• Process:
• Working within our product development process.
• Conducting design reviews.
• Producing the required level of documentation.
• Driving continuous improvement of the firmware engineering elements of our processes.
• Firmware Engineers work in a multi-disciplinary project team with other engineers; outside vendors; and individuals from other internal departments (procurement, manufacturing and marketing).
• A strong emphasis is placed on the ability to deliver systems to specification, on time and within their cost target.
• Engineers work within a structured development process designed to manage risk effectively.

Qualifications & Experience:

Required:

• Bachelor of Science or equivalent in Electronics/Physics/Engineering with a Computing bias.
• Proven ability to take embedded software designs from concept through to full manufacturing.
• Experience with multi-threaded embedded software designs using real-time operating systems.
• Ability to test out ideas and concepts using simulation and hands-on prototyping.
• Ability to program using C and/or C++. 
• Experience with the Microsoft Visual Studio tools or similar for developing test harnesses using C/C++/C#.
• Ability to use firmware development tools to troubleshoot own or existing designs.
• Proven ability developing with embedded Linux.
• Working knowledge of the TCP/IP stack.
• Experience with general digital hardware designs using glue logic and programmable devices such as CPLDs, FPGAs, ASICs and their programming tools.
• Excellent communication skills: both written and verbal.  
• Ability to engage and work closely with members of a cross-functional team, particularly in electronics, systems and software. 
• Self-motivation: showing initiative, attention to detail, and bias for action.
• Ability to assess technical risk and to formulate effective risk management strategies including analysis and evaluation.
• Ability to plan projects, providing timescale estimates and allocating/prioritising tasks accordingly.

Advantageous:

• Knowledge of Xilinx tools including Vivado/Vitis, and experience with Zynq-7000 SOCs.
• Knowledge of PIC/68k architectures.
• Experience of Ethernet / USB / Serial / Bluetooth LE comms.
• Experience of programming in assembler.

·Masters or similar qualification in Physics/Electronics Engineering/Computer Science.

• Interest in physics/optics.
• Optics, electronics, or thermal analysis experience.
• Experience with MPLAB/Eclipse/IAR.
• Experience with source control tools such as Git, Perforce, SVN.
• Experience in developing high precision designs.
• Experience of product development within a company making some form of measurement instrumentation.
• Familiarity with product design methodologies such as a life cycle model.
• Scientific background or interests.
• Some business knowledge.