Senior FPGA Lead — Aerospace RTL & Verification

Firefly Aerospace; United States; On-site; USD 140,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health, dental, and vision plans

Parental leave

Relocation benefits

Educational reimbursement

Short term disability

Flexible PTO

Job summary

Firefly Aerospace is seeking an FP­­GA Development Lead to shape the future of our launch vehicles and spacecraft. You will lead high‑reliability FPGA design, RTL coding, timing closure, and hardware integration across avionics and ground systems.

You will mentor engineers, drive best practices, and collaborate with embedded software, hardware, GNC, and systems teams to deliver robust FPGA solutions for aerospace missions.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or related field.
• Minimum 8+ years of FPGA development experience.
• Strong proficiency in VHDL and/or Verilog/SystemVerilog for RTL design.
• Experience with FPGA architectures (AMD/Xilinx, Intel/Altera, or similar) including timing closure, place-and-route, and constraints.
• Hands-on experience with FPGA lab bring-up, debugging, and integration with embedded systems or hardware.
• Ability to mentor or technically lead other engineers (formal people management not required).
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Exposure to synthesis, static timing analysis, and power/thermal considerations for flight hardware.

Responsibilities

• Technical Leadership & Mentorship: Provide technical direction and guidance to FPGA engineers. Mentor teammates on architecture, RTL design, verification strategies, timing closure, and debugging.
• Technical Excellence: Drive adoption of best practices in FPGA development, reliability, and design verification.
• Hands-on Development: Own significant portions of FPGA designs from concept through implementation, timing closure, lab bring-up, integration, and verification.
• Process Improvement: Help establish and refine clear FPGA development processes for design, verification, timing analysis, and integration.
• Collaboration & Integration: Work closely with embedded software, hardware engineering, systems engineering and other stakeholders to ensure seamless integration of FPGA designs with overall avionics and vehicle systems.

Skills

RTL design

Mentorship

Communication skills

Scriptability (Tcl/Python)

Verification methodologies

High-speed interfaces knowledge

Education

Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering or Computer Engineering

Master's degree (preferred)

Tools

Xilinx/AMD FPGA architectures

Intel/Altera FPGA architectures

Synthesis and timing tools

Job description

Firefly Aerospace is seeking an FP­­GA Development Lead to shape the future of our launch vehicles and spacecraft. You will lead high‑reliability FPGA design, RTL coding, timing closure, and hardware integration across avionics and ground systems.

You will mentor engineers, drive best practices, and collaborate with embedded software, hardware, GNC, and systems teams to deliver robust FPGA solutions for aerospace missions.