Senior/Staff FPGA & Electrical Engineer
Job Description
Senior/Staff FPGA & Electrical Engineer– San Diego, CA
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I’m hiring a Senior/Staff FPGA & Electrical Engineer for a pre-commercial company developing next-generation implantable electronics. This is a hands-on, technically deep role owning the electrical and programmable-logic design of the implant from concept through design verification.
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What You’ll Do
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- Architect and develop synthesizable HDL (VHDL or SystemVerilog) for a low-power FPGA serving as the implant’s health, status, control, and communications controller
- Implement supervisory functions: power sequencing, voltage/current/temperature monitoring, watchdogs, fault detection, and safe-state transitions
- Define and implement the implant side of a low-power serial link to distributed sensing electronics, proven in FPGA emulation with silicon partners ahead of hardware
- Design fault-tolerant control and monitoring logic, including redundant monitors, independent shutdown paths, and fail-safe defaults; lead FMEA and fault-tree analysis per ISO 14971
- Own the implant’s electrical architecture, including custom silicon integration, inductive charging, RF telemetry, and power budgeting
- Lead miniaturized PCB and flex-rigid design in Altium
- Define and execute electrical and FPGA verification plans within design controls (IEC 60601-1, IEC 62304, ISO 14708)
- Review and debug firmware and test software alongside the firmware team; support design transfer to contract manufacturers
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What You Bring
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- BS in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or related field
- 8+ years in mixed-signal hardware design for miniaturized, high-reliability electronic systems
- 5+ years of hands-on FPGA development on low-power families, including timing closure, clock-domain crossing, and simulation-based verification
- Serial interface design experience on low-power, resource-constrained systems: LVDS signaling, framing and error detection, SPI/I2C, register maps
- Design of safety-relevant or fault-tolerant digital systems
- Hands-on inductive power transfer or resonant/magnetics design
- High-density PCB and flex design in Altium; SPICE and signal-integrity analysis
- Ability to read, debug, and review embedded C firmware
- Experience taking electronic subsystems from prototype through design verification into production
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Nice to Have
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- Active implantable device experience (neurostimulators, cochlear implants, cardiac rhythm devices)
- Custom silicon co-design and FPGA emulation of partner RTL
- Functional safety standards (IEC 60601-1 PEMS, IEC 61508, ISO 26262, DO-254)
- Implantable or body-worn antenna/RF design with EM simulation (HFSS, CST, COMSOL)
- Coil design and EM/thermal modeling, including MRI compatibility
- Low-noise neural or bioelectric front-end design
- Experience supporting IDE, PMA, or 510(k) submissions
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