Senior Digital Payload Systems Engineer, Space FPGA/ASIC

Viasat; Tempe (AZ); On-site; USD 181,000 - 337,000; Full time

Job summary

Viasat is seeking a Digital Payload Systems Engineer to provide technical leadership for complex digital space systems, owning end-to-end payload architecture, system performance, requirements, and verification strategy.

The successful candidate will serve as a senior technical authority across FPGA/ASIC based digital systems, independently defining complex problems and mentoring other engineers. This is a site-based role with a 60%+ office presence.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Physics, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or related field.
• 8+ years of systems engineering and digital payload development experience.
• Ability to define ambiguous technical problems and drive resolution.
• Experience owning payload or system-level technical budgets for performance, latency, throughput, power, timing, resources, margin, and risk.
• Strong lifecycle systems engineering knowledge from concept to verification and readiness.
• Proficiency with HDL and high-speed digital interfaces.

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 systems.
• 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 standards-based implementations including DVB-S2, DVB-S2X, DVB-RCS, and 3GPP.
• Own technical budgets, margin posture, assumptions, risks, and analytical models supporting program decisions.
• Develop and maintain key technical artifacts, including SRDs, TRDs, interface specifications, trade studies, and verification plans.
• Lead requirements decomposition, allocation, traceability, and burndown across subsystem teams.
• Support major lifecycle reviews including SRR, PDR, CDR, test readiness, and operational readiness reviews.
• Define system-level verification and validation strategies with integration and test teams.
• Provide technical leadership on interfaces, timing, throughput, resource utilization, high-speed data movement, and payload processing behavior.
• Communicate technical recommendations, risks, and tradeoffs to engineering and program leadership.
• Mentor engineers and help improve systems engineering practices, standards, and digital payload development processes.

Skills

FPGA architecture

ASIC architecture

DSP

High-speed I/O

Clocking architectures

Payload processing

VHDL/Verilog/SystemVerilog

Requirements management

Education

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

Tools

MBSE

Simulation tools

Job description

Viasat is seeking a Digital Payload Systems Engineer to provide technical leadership for complex digital space systems, owning end-to-end payload architecture, system performance, requirements, and verification strategy.

The successful candidate will serve as a senior technical authority across FPGA/ASIC based digital systems, independently defining complex problems and mentoring other engineers. This is a site-based role with a 60%+ office presence.