Senior Digital ASIC Design Engineer

The mission of the Instrumentation Division is to develop state-of-the-art instrumentation required for experimental research programs at Brookhaven Lab and to maintain the expertise and facilities in specialized high technology areas essential for this work. Development of facilities is motivated by present Brookhaven research programs and anticipated future directions of research. Our work has a significant impact on programs throughout the world that rely on state-of-the-art radiation detectors, readout electronics, data acquisition systems, and scientific instrumentation.

We seek a motivated Senior Digital ASIC Design Engineer to join our team as a senior digital designer for developing advanced readout ASICs and system-on-chip architectures for scientific instrumentation. The successful candidate will contribute to microelectronics for the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC), including ePIC detector systems, while also supporting ASICs for other programs in high-energy physics, nuclear physics, photon sciences, quantum information science, and related instrumentation efforts at BNL and with external partners.

In this role, you will lead the architecture, RTL design, implementation, and integration of digital blocks and subsystems for mixed-signal ASICs used in detector readout, trigger and timing distribution, data concentration, control, calibration, and high-speed data transmission. You will collaborate closely with analog and mixed-signal designers, verification engineers, physical design engineers, firmware developers, detector scientists, and other technical team members in the ASIC group, the Instrumentation Division, and the broader scientific community. We look for candidates with strong digital ASIC design expertise, particularly in low-power, radiation-aware, timing-critical, and data-intensive systems for scientific applications.

Our science and engineering challenges are complex and unique! We are engaged in the development of ASICs for particle detectors, high-resolution X- and gamma-ray spectrometers, high-rate photon counters and imagers, cryogenic and radiation-tolerant instrumentation, and other specialized systems for high-energy physics, nuclear physics, photon sciences, quantum information science, and related scientific programs. Our ASICs may operate in extreme environments, must meet stringent power, timing, noise, and radiation requirements, and must integrate reliably with sensors, FPGAs, data acquisition systems, and laboratory test infrastructure. The applications of these ASICs extend beyond BNL to national and international user facilities: your work will have the potential to shape the instruments used for scientific discovery and engineering advancements across the globe!

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

• Take a lead role in the architecture, microarchitecture, RTL design, and integration of digital ASICs and digital subsystems for scientific instruments, including EIC detector readout and related programs

• Develop design specifications based on detector, data acquisition, timing, power, radiation, and system integration requirements in conjunction with scientists, engineers, and project stakeholders

• Design and implement synthesizable RTL in SystemVerilog/Verilog for blocks such as data formatting, sparsification, buffering, trigger and timing interfaces, configuration and control, calibration logic, digital signal processing, and high-speed link interfaces

• Develop and maintain reusable digital IP, register maps, bus interfaces, clock and reset architectures, memory interfaces, finite-state machines, FIFOs, error detection/correction logic, and monitoring features suitable for ASIC integration

• Carry out or contribute to synthesis, static timing analysis, clock-domain crossing analysis, reset-domain crossing analysis, power estimation, linting, design-for-test insertion, and timing-driven physical implementation in Cadence, Synopsys, Siemens, or similar CAD/EDA environments

• Work closely with physical design and analog/mixed-signal teams to ensure successful floorplanning, partitioning, timing closure, power integrity, signal integrity, and mixed-signal integration

• Coordinate with verification engineers to define verification plans, develop self-checking test benches, review functional coverage, debug simulations, and close design issues before tapeout

• Support FPGA prototyping, laboratory evaluation, test-board development, bring-up, characterization, and integration of ASICs with sensors, firmware, and data acquisition systems

• Lead technical documentation, design reviews, interface control documents, and contributions to new project initiatives and proposals making use of emerging microelectronics technologies

Required Knowledge, Skills, and Abil