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Star Catcher is building the first energy grid in space to power the orbital economy. The company is developing technology to wirelessly beam energy to spacecraft's existing solar panels, enabling spacecraft to "plug into" an orbital power grid rather than generating all their own power. This Senior Electrical Engineer - FPGA Firmware role is based in Jacksonville, Florida and focuses on developing space-to-space power beaming spacecraft and the Star Catcher Network orbital power grid.
Key Responsibilities:
- Lead FPGA gateware architecture for real-time control loops, including beam-control servo logic for Pointing, Acquisition & Tracking (PAT), and co-own interfaces with digital hardware, embedded software, and systems leads.
- Decompose and allocate system and board-level requirements to FPGA specifications, and architect solutions targeting FPGA/SoC platforms.
- Review product specifications and generate module-level block diagrams, flow diagrams, and design concepts for FPGA subsystems.
- Drive timing closure, pipelining, and clock-domain crossing strategy for mission-critical designs.
- Set partitioning strategy between hard processor subsystems and reconfigurable fabric on SoC platforms.
- Lead full lifecycle development of VHDL or Verilog gateware, from architecture through simulation, integration, and test on circuit card assemblies.
- Map FPGA simulation work products to system-level requirements and capabilities using complex block- and top-level simulations to verify performance ahead of hardware integration.
- Lead bench-level system integration of FPGA designs with hardware, firmware, and software.
- Refine and enforce consistent firmware development processes and version control practices across FPGA designs.
- Mentor firmware engineers and establish FPGA design/verification standards.
- Select and qualify FPGA/SoC platforms and associated toolchains for high-reliability, space-flight applications.
- Support qualification and production test efforts, including troubleshooting in the event of test failures.
Requirements:
- Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
- 10+ years of professional experience designing and verifying FPGA gateware in VHDL or Verilog.
- Experience with FPGA/SoC design toolchains, including synthesis, place-and-route, and timing closure.
- Demonstrated experience implementing real-time control loops in reconfigurable logic.
- Thorough understanding of version control best practices and tools for tracking changes to an FPGA baseline.
Desired Skills:
- Experience evaluating radiation-tolerant FPGA/SoC platforms, including Microchip RTG4/RT PolarFire nonvolatile configuration and AMD XQR Kintex UltraScale/XQR Versal SRAM-based configuration; understanding of configuration-upset mitigation and scrubbing.
- Experience implementing DSP or signal-processing in FPGA fabric.
- Familiarity with spacecraft communications protocols (CCSDS) such as AOS, EPP, TM/TC, SPP.
- Experience with formal verification or advanced simulation methodologies, including transaction-based models for block- and top-level FPGA simulation.
- Experience with high-speed serial interfaces (PCIe, SpaceWire, Ethernet), control interfaces (I2C, SPI, RS-232/422), and memory interfaces (DDR3/DDR4).
- Experience with FPGA devices (AMD Kintex/Virtex UltraScale+, Microchip RTG4 or RT PolarFire) and processor-integrated SoCs (AMD Zynq UltraScale+ or XQR Versal).
- Familiarity with backplane-based architecture (SpaceVPX, VPX) and board-to-FPGA interface constraints.
- Experience with NASA/DoD life cycle and technical reviews (SRR, PDR, CDR).
- Experience mentoring engineers or establishing team-wide design standards.
- Ability to prioritize assignments and complete design/project goals with minimal oversight in a fast-paced environment.
