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K2 Space is building the largest and highest-power satellites ever flown, backed by $450M in funding from leading investors including Altimeter Capital, Redpoint Ventures, and T. Rowe Price. The company is mass-producing advanced satellite platforms for missions from low Earth orbit to deep space, with multiple launches planned through 2026 and 2027.
As a Senior FPGA Engineer, you will own the architecture and implementation of critical programmable logic systems across K2's spacecraft. You'll develop mission-critical FPGA firmware that controls propulsion systems, attitude control systems, RF systems, and power systems to ensure safe and reliable operation of the vehicle.
In your first six months, you will work with the team to develop core pieces of the FPGA architecture, including strategies for fault tolerance, real-time control, high-speed data routing, and telemetry downlink. Within your first year, you'll implement larger and more complex FPGA systems and begin verifying code using software and hardware-in-the-loop simulators. By year two, you'll operate your code on multiple spacecraft, demonstrating robust performance in demanding missions.
Key responsibilities include owning the architecture and implementation of critical programmable logic systems for vehicle networking, RF systems, and real-time control; implementing these architectures in RTL using VHDL and SystemVerilog; verifying and validating FPGA designs using simulation, bench-testing, and Hardware In The Loop testbeds; supporting integration, test, and troubleshooting efforts across all levels of spacecraft development and manufacturing; and developing tools and infrastructure to support rapid, high-reliability FPGA solutions.
The software team at K2 encourages engineers to work across the full stack, including HDL programming, embedded software on microcontrollers, operating systems, application software on flight computers, GNC algorithms, and test systems. This approach creates stronger, more capable engineers.
Required qualifications include a Bachelor's degree in computer science, computer engineering, electrical engineering, math, or a STEM discipline (or 3+ years of professional software development experience), 3+ years working with complex FPGA designs spanning digital, mixed signal, or RF applications, and development experience with VHDL or SystemVerilog.
Nice-to-have skills include experience integrating logic onto Xilinx SoC platforms, digital signal processing fundamentals and implementing complex DSP logic and software-defined radios on FPGAs, and experience implementing high-speed SERDES interfaces such as Ethernet, PCIe, and JESD204C.
