Senior Digital Payload Architect—FPGA/ASIC

Viasat; Greater London; On-site; GBP 110,000 - 140,000; Full time

Job summary

Viasat in the United Kingdom is seeking an experienced Digital Payload Systems Engineer to own end-to-end digital payload architecture, performance, and verification. You will lead architecture trade studies for FPGA/ASIC, define budgets, and drive cross-functional delivery.

You’ll mentor engineers, contribute to technical standards, and communicate risks to program leadership. This role requires deep systems engineering expertise and a proven ability to solve complex problems across hardware,

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Physics, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or related technical field, or equivalent experience.
• 8+ years in systems engineering, digital payload development, FPGA or ASIC based systems, aerospace or mission-critical contexts.
• Ability to define ambiguous technical problems and drive resolution across teams.
• Experience owning payload/system budgets for performance, latency, throughput, power, timing, margin, and risk.
• Deep experience with requirements development, decomposition, allocation, traceability, and verification closure.
• Full lifecycle systems engineering knowledge from concept through integration and readiness.
• Significant FPGA/ASIC architecture/implementation experience.
• Strong foundation in DSP, high-speed interfaces, and payload data path architecture.
• Proficiency with VHDL, Verilog, SystemVerilog or equivalent HDL.
• Understanding SERDES, transceivers, timing closure, high-speed link bring-up.
• Ability to influence technical outcomes without direct authority.
• Strong communication for design reviews, risk discussions, and forums.
• Experience mentoring engineers and improving practices.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end digital payload system performance, architecture, requirements, and verification strategy.
• Lead architecture definition and trade studies for FPGA, ASIC, DSP, high-speed I/O, clocking, and payload processing.
• Define and resolve complex system-level problems across hardware, firmware, software, RF, integration, and test teams.
• Drive design decisions for beamforming, channelization, regenerative payloads, and DVB/3GPP standards.
• Own technical budgets, margins, assumptions, risks, and analytical models for program decisions.
• Develop and maintain SRDs, TRDs, interface specs, trade studies, and verification plans.
• Lead requirements decomposition, allocation, traceability, and burndown across subsystems.
• Support lifecycle reviews: SRR, PDR, CDR, test readiness, operational readiness.
• Define system-level verification/validation with integration and test teams.
• Provide leadership on interfaces, timing, throughput, resources, and payload behavior.
• Communicate recommendations, risks, and tradeoffs to leadership.
• Mentor engineers and improve digital payload development practices.

Skills

System engineering

Digital payload development

FPGA

ASIC

DSP

Verilog/SystemVerilog/VHDL

Technical leadership

Requirements management

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Physics, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or related technical field

Tools

VHDL

Verilog

SystemVerilog

Job description

Viasat in the United Kingdom is seeking an experienced Digital Payload Systems Engineer to own end-to-end digital payload architecture, performance, and verification. You will lead architecture trade studies for FPGA/ASIC, define budgets, and drive cross-functional delivery.

You’ll mentor engineers, contribute to technical standards, and communicate risks to program leadership. This role requires deep systems engineering expertise and a proven ability to solve complex problems across hardware,