Hardware Design Engineer

Hardware Design Engineer (5–7 Years Experience)

Location: Chicago, IL

Work mode: Work from office / Hybrid

Key Skills & Experience

• Digital and embedded hardware design: 5–7 years of hands-on experience taking designs from concept, schematic through bring-up testing.
• PCIe interface design: Experience designing and debugging PCIe Gen1, including reference clock distribution, AC coupling, lane routing constraints, link training issues, and eye/compliance debug.
• Low-voltage DC power design: Power tree and sequencing design with buck converters and LDOs, power-integrity checks, and low-power techniques (power budgeting, sleep modes, leakage reduction).
• Signal integrity: Practical knowledge of high-speed interface design, including impedance-controlled stackups, termination, crosstalk, return-path management, and pre-/post-layout SI review.
• Precision analog and low-noise mixed-signal design: ADC/DAC and sensor front ends, reference and op-amp design, analog/digital grounding and partitioning, and noise budgeting.
• EDA tools: Proficiency in Cadence Allegro Design Entry HDL (Concept HDL) for schematic capture, including library/symbol management and clean BOM and netlist handoff to layout.
• Peripheral and serial interfaces: SPI, I²C, UART, USB, and GPIO, including level shifting, pull-up sizing, bus timing, and protocol-level debugging.
• Execute design validation, board bring-up, functional testing, and performance verification.
• Perform root cause analysis (RCA) and debug hardware issues during development, validation, and production phases.
• Bring-up and validation: Board bring-up, hardware debugging, and design validation using oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and protocol analyzers, with documented test results.
• Cross-functional collaboration: Works closely with PCB layout, firmware, and system engineering teams, including design reviews, DFM/DFT feedback, and component selection with lifecycle/obsolescence checks.