Senior/Staff FPGA & Electrical Engineer

Senior/Staff FPGA & Electrical Engineer– San Diego, CA

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.

What You’ll Do

• 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

What You Bring

• 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

Nice to Have

• 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