Senior Firmware Engineer

About Barber-Nichols:

Barber-Nichols (BN) is a premier provider of custom turbomachinery solutions serving the Defense, Aerospace, Cryogenics, and Energy industries. Our team consists of industry leaders who collaborate closely with equally accomplished customers to deliver technologies that advance their markets and establish enduring partnerships. At BN, we foster a results-driven environment that values professional growth, rewards achievement, and supports innovation. From designing the blower for NASA’s Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s moon Titan to engineering critical components for the U.S. Navy’s MK-48 program, BN’s portfolio spans some of the most exciting and impactful projects in the world. For those seeking to contribute to impactful projects alongside a highly skilled team, BN offers an exceptional place to build your career. 

Position Summary:

The Senior Firmware Engineer owns the analysis, design, integration, documentation, and troubleshooting of Embedded FPGA designs for the product platforms primarily consisting of motor controllers in the 100W to 50kW range within Space, Defense, Energy and Thermal Management product segments. They develop solutions that ensure both project and long-term business success in coordination with other members of the electrical engineering department as overseen by the project lead. Projects may include clean sheet designs, modifications/enhancements to existing designs, repeat manufacturing support, and/or sustaining and support of existing products.

Key Results Areas:

1. Work directly with department leads to collaboratively develop designs, and products compliant with all customer requirements including technical, schedule, budget, and quality.
2. Decompose customer requirements necessary for system definition and Firmware allocation.
3. Develop designs and documentation to determine conformance to project specifications and requirements.
4. Own all firmware related content in cross functional design reviews.
5. Collaborate with leadership to help define programmatic activities such as creating and maintaining project budgets, schedules and formal milestones
6. Define firmware integration and formal test plans and specify/procure associated test hardware for developing, validating and troubleshooting designs.
7. Review testing (both design, assembly and product), preparing results and deriving conclusions as appropriate.
8. Resolve technical challenges across a wide range of products, ranging from obsolescence support of heritage products to troubleshooting designs under active development to testing emerging technology for future integration into the business.
9. Own the technical analysis and design effort with minimal oversight.
10. Own system troubleshooting and control development activities.
11. Analyze and recommend design approaches and processes to ensure both project and long-term business success.
12. Interfacing and mentoring with other team members.

Qualifications:

To qualify for this position, an individual must possess the knowledge, training, experience and abilities required.

Education and Training

• Bachelor’s degree in electrical or computer engineering or equivalent combination of education and work experience

Experience:

• Minimum of 8 years related experience developing complex products with multiple subsystems (i.e. sensors and signal conditioning, diagnostics, motor controls, etc.).
• Demonstrated ability to develop firmware for embedded controller hardware from proposal to final shipment.
• Demonstrated ability to review customer specifications, develop designs to best support them and flow derived requirements to other analysts and engineers.
• Familiar with the following toolsets (Vivado/Libero/Quartus/Diamond)
• Strong proficiency in MATLAB Simulink
• Minimum of 5 years’ experience with building Simulink models
• Strong ability to debug FPGA hardware on target in a laboratory environment
• Exceptional knowledge of SPI/PCIe/Rs422/CAN/ARINC/I2C/CRCs/JTAG
• Experience with Xilinx, Microsemi, and Lattice FPGA devices
• Working knowledge of safety critical systems and architectures
• Working knowledge of switching power supplies, inverter design, and motor controls

Other:

• Must be willing to work overtime as required
• Travel up to 10% of working time.

Desired Job Qualification:

• 8 years’ experience designing safety critical architectures using FPGA’s
• Experience using MTALB’s HDL Coder for FPGA development
• Experience designi