Lead Hardware Engineer – Defence High-Speed Electronics

Winsearch; Luton; Hybrid; GBP 120,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Winsearch is recruiting a Lead Hardware Engineer in Luton for a 12-month contract, on-site four days per week. You will design digital and mixed-signal hardware for advanced defence systems, working with FPGA/SoC architectures and high-speed interfaces.

Active SC clearance is required. The role involves end-to-end hardware development, verification, and collaboration across cross-functional teams, with compensation at £65 per hour Inside IR35.

Qualifications

• Experience in high-speed digital electronics for defence/aerospace.
• Ability to translate system requirements into hardware solutions.
• Knowledge of DDR, PCIe, Ethernet interfaces.
• Experience with validation and qualification activities.
• Experience leading technical reviews and mentoring engineers.

Responsibilities

• Design and develop digital and mixed-signal hardware.
• Define hardware architectures for FPGA, SoC and processor-based systems.
• Create schematics and support PCB layout activities for high-speed designs.
• Develop and verify interfaces including DDR memory, PCIe and Ethernet.
• Integrate hardware, firmware and software into complete system solutions.
• Perform simulation, verification and validation activities.
• Support board-level bring-up, debugging and fault investigation.
• Collaborate with cross-functional engineering teams across the product lifecycle.
• Support environmental, EMC and qualification testing.
• Produce technical documentation and engineering evidence to support programme delivery.
• Support customer demonstrations, trials and acceptance activities.

Skills

FPGA/SoC hw

Multilayer PCB

High-speed interfaces

ECAD tools

Hardware debugging

Signal integrity

HW/SW integration

Requirements-to-hardware

V&V activities

Tools

Altium/OrCAD/Xpedition

Job description

Winsearch is recruiting a Lead Hardware Engineer in Luton for a 12-month contract, on-site four days per week. You will design digital and mixed-signal hardware for advanced defence systems, working with FPGA/SoC architectures and high-speed interfaces.

Active SC clearance is required. The role involves end-to-end hardware development, verification, and collaboration across cross-functional teams, with compensation at £65 per hour Inside IR35.