Principal Electrical Engineer

We are seeking an experienced Principal Electrical Engineer to join the Field Intelligence Element (FIE) to support the development, integration, deployment, and sustainment of laboratory and field-deployable sensing, monitoring, and control systems. The FIE enables Argonne National Laboratory to provide products and services to DOE’s Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence (DOE-IN), the Intelligence Community (IC), and non-IC federal agencies.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Maintain, troubleshoot, and improve the current suite of software tools used for laboratory and field experimental operation within the group.  This includes configuring, adapting, validating, and documenting these software tools to meet the varying needs of the experiments.  This task will require the candidate to become fluent in our current software designs and be able to diagnose issues down to the network layer, including communication interfaces, embedded operating systems, and field-deployed network configurations.

• Design replacement software and hardware components to improve upon existing systems, with emphasis on reliability, maintainability, performance, cybersecurity, and field readiness.

• Design new electronics configurations which seamlessly merge with other existing systems.

• Design, develop, test, and integrate replacement software, firmware, hardware, and electronics components to improve existing sensing, monitoring, and control systems.

• Ability to travel up to 15% of the time is required.  Travel includes field trials in domestic and international locations to deploy, test, develop, and gather data using specific sensing systems.

• Assist in long-term planning of project direction and scope as new opportunities arise, including system modernization and evaluation of emerging technologies.

Position Requirements

• Degree in electrical engineering, computer engineering or a closely related technical field and relevant engineering experience, or equivalent.

• Hands-on experience in soldering, cable assembly, use of test equipment, troubleshooting systems, and complex system integration of commercial technology into specialized platforms

• Serve as a technical subject matter expert in applying hardware and software technologies relevant to the development and maintenance of scientific control systems

• Drive end-to-end software and firmware life-cycle phases and source/release control in a variety of language environments (Python, JavaScript, R, C++, C); have experience deploying for various operating systems in both desktop and embedded systems

• Be proficient in Python, and have development experience in the following technologies: embedded Linux, make utilities, C, C++, shell scripting, client/server applications, network communications, relational databases and user interface design, and web services

• Experience with the design and maintenance of custom embedded Linux hardware and operating systems

• Well-versed in industry standard design practices in terms of software and network security, including secure design, configuration control, and protection of field-deployed systems.

• Experience creating and developing practical technical solutions in resource-constrained or field-deployed environments.

• Be self-motivated, detail-oriented with good programming disciplines including code documentation and version control

• Interpersonal, communication, and presentation skills, with the ability to communicate technical information to multidisciplinary teams and end users.

• Mechanical 3D CAD and design skills, able to assist in design and construction of field deployable test apparatus

• Proficient in the understanding and modification of existing schematics, printed circuit board layouts, interconnects, and cable design

• Expertise in developing for common serial communication protocols (TCP, UDP, I2C, UART, SPI, and others)

• Experience with developing and implementing digital signal processing algorithms and hardware in real-time systems

• Lead efforts to design and construct custom analog and digital printed circuit boards

• Modify existing Python-based control system software to meet future project needs

• Be the lead architect for the development of new control system software utilizing modern design patterns, frameworks, and methodologies

• Knowledge of the operation of radiation detection instrumentation

• Experience with designing and creating intuitive graphical user interfaces (GUIs) to control system app