Senior Hardware Engineer
Location: East Cambridgeshire
Employment Type: Full-time, Permanent
Salary: 65,000-70,000
The Role
A growing technology and engineering business is looking for a Senior Hardware Engineer - Electronics to join its R&D team.
The successful candidate will play a key role in developing complex electronic products, taking projects from initial concept and requirements through to design, prototyping, testing and production.
This is a hands-on senior engineering position suited to someone with strong electronics design experience who can work across analogue, digital and embedded hardware.
Key Responsibilities
- Own electronics development from initial concept through to production.
- Design low-noise analogue, digital and mixed-signal circuits.
- Develop hardware incorporating microprocessors, microcontrollers and FPGAs.
- Design production-ready multi-layer PCBs, considering signal integrity, power integrity and thermal performance.
- Carry out schematic capture, component selection, simulation, PCB design and prototype development.
- Lead board bring-up, fault finding, testing and design verification.
- Develop and optimise power supplies, protection and power-management systems.
- Ensure designs meet relevant EMC, safety and regulatory requirements.
- Lead design risk assessments and contribute to DFM and DFT activities.
- Work closely with firmware and software engineers across the hardware/firmware interface.
- Produce technical documentation, BOMs, drawings and verification records.
- Support project planning, technical proposals and cost/effort estimates.
- Work collaboratively within a SCRUM-based multidisciplinary R&D environment.
- Support customer-facing technical discussions and prototype demonstrations where required.
Essential Skills & Experience
- Degree or equivalent qualification in Electronics, Electrical Engineering or a related discipline.
- 5+ years' commercial experience in full product lifecycle electronics R&D.
- Strong analogue electronics design experience, particularly with low-noise and high-frequency circuits.
- Experience with digital and mixed-signal hardware.
- Experience with FPGA, microprocessor and microcontroller-based systems.
- Strong PCB design experience, ideally using Altium.
- Experience designing multi-layer PCBs and understanding signal integrity, grounding, shielding and thermal considerations.
- Knowledge of high-speed communication interfaces such as LVDS, Ethernet, USB, SPI and IC.
- Experience with power-supply design and power integrity.
- Strong practical laboratory skills, including the use of oscilloscopes, spectrum analysers, logic analysers and signal generators.
- Understanding of EMC, DFM, DFT and product compliance.
- Strong problem-solving skills with the ability to take ownership of projects through to completion.
Desirable Experience
Experience in any of the following would be beneficial:
- Complex measurement, sensing or imaging equipment.
- High-frequency or precision measurement electronics.
- Transducer drive/receive electronics.
- Taking electronic products through EMC and safety testing.
- CE/UKCA certification.
- Mixed-signal simulation such as SPICE.
- MATLAB or Python for engineering analysis and automated testing.
- Experience working within an agile/SCRUM environment.