Digital ASIC/FPGA Engineer

Job Title

Digital ASIC/FPGA Engineer

Role Summary

Design and implement RTL and support ASIC/FPGA development for ultra low-power System-on-Chip (SoC) products focused on Bluetooth Smart wireless sensors. Work across CPU subsystems, MAC layer, PHY interfaces, and validation to deliver silicon and FPGA prototypes.

The role involves specification, architecture support, RTL development, verification, simulation, synthesis, timing and power analysis, lab bring-up, and customer-issue investigation.

Experience Level

Entry-level (open to candidates from entry-level through engineers with multiple years of experience).

Responsibilities

Primary engineering duties and deliverables:

• Write and maintain RTL (Verilog) for MAC, modem, CPU subsystems, and interfaces between MAC/PHY and MAC/RF layers.
• Define technical requirements, produce specifications, and propose architecture and implementation solutions.
• Perform RTL simulation, synthesis, linting, timing analysis, logic equivalence checking, and area/power analysis.
• Support FPGA prototyping and lab testing of ICs and FPGA boards.
• Perform chip validation, board debugging, bring-up, and troubleshooting of internal and customer-reported issues.
• Review schematics and PCB layout related to ASIC/FPGA hardware integration.
• Analyze system performance and internal architectures to meet low-voltage, energy-efficient design targets.
• Conduct power-performance-area (PPA) evaluations and verification of functionality and performance.

Requirements

Must-have:

• Strong RTL/Verilog coding and design experience.
• Hands-on experience with embedded hardware design, development, and lab debugging.
• Experience with ASIC flows: RTL simulation, synthesis, lint, timing analysis, logic equivalence checks, and PPA analysis.
• Familiarity with wireless communication systems and protocols, particularly Bluetooth MAC layer concepts.
• Experience with FPGA prototyping and chip bring-up/validation.
• Good analytical and problem-solving skills with ability to work in a team.

Nice-to-have:

• Experience programming embedded ARM or 8051 processors.
• Implementation experience with protocols such as NFC, USB 2.0, UART, SPI, I2C, JTAG.
• Experience with high-level synthesis and/or system-level simulation tools (Octave/Matlab, NS2/OPNET/OMNET).
• Background in circuit design of standard cells or low-voltage CMOS logic/memory techniques.

Education Requirements

Bachelor's, Master's, or PhD in Electrical Engineering (EE) or Computer Science (CS) noted; emphasis on embedded design skills. The posting is open to entry-level candidates as well as those with multiple years of experience.

About the Company

Company: spChips

Headquarters: Carlsbad, CA, USA

spChips designs ultra-low-power wireless semiconductor solutions, focusing on Bluetooth Smart wireless sensors and system-on-chip (SoC) integration including MAC, PHY, CPU subsystems, and ASIC/FPGA development.