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Rocket Lab is an end-to-end space company building rockets, spacecraft, and critical subsystems. The Space Systems division has enabled over 1,700 missions for interplanetary exploration, in-space manufacturing, and national security initiatives, working with NASA, the Space Development Agency, and the U.S. Space Force.
Rocket Lab Optical Systems solves mission-critical space domain and Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance challenges for Department of Defense and Intelligence Community customers. Building on over 20 years of electro-optical and infrared systems innovation, the team delivers responsive, scalable sensing solutions across all orbital domains.
As a Senior FPGA Engineer II, you will support Tranche 3 of the U.S. Space Development Agency's Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture by designing FPGAs for advanced electro-optical space payloads.
Key responsibilities include:
- Collaborate with hardware design teams on requirements definition
- Execute complete FPGA logic design, coding, simulation, and testing
- Support hardware and software development teams during product bring-up and testing
- Provide subject-matter expertise on design and automated test procedures to customers and production teams
- Analyze customer specifications, datasheets, and technical documentation to determine design feasibility
- Debug designs in laboratory environments
- Perform synthesis, implementation, and timing analysis
Required qualifications:
- Bachelor's degree in computer engineering, electrical engineering, or equivalent
- 8+ years of FPGA firmware development experience in VHDL
- Ability to obtain and maintain U.S. Government security clearance
Desirable experience includes Xilinx/AMD Versal architecture, FPGAs in radiation environments (SEU/SEL mitigation), FPGA-based image processing, IP creation and integration, C/Python/MATLAB, software interfaces (interrupts, DMA), DDR4/Aurora/high-speed transceiver design, AXI interfaces, and PCB design tools like Altium Designer.
