# Staff Engineer, FPGA Design

**Company:** [Shield AI](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/shield-ai)
**Location:** Dallas, TX
**Role:** Embedded Engineering
**Salary:** $150k – $230k/yr
**Experience:** 7+ years
**Skills:** fpga design, vhdl, systemverilog, xilinx vivado, timing closure, axi4, axi-stream, tcl scripting, Git, ethernet, CI/CD
**Posted:** 2026-07-28

> Staff FPGA Design Engineer responsible for designing, implementing, verifying, and debugging high-performance FPGA solutions for UAV avionics and flight control systems. Requires strong digital design experience with VHDL/SystemVerilog, timing closure, and cross-functional collaboration.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities
- Design and develop FPGA-based communication modules for advanced UAV platforms.
- Develop solutions that enable precise timing synchronization and redundancy across flight controllers.
- Integrate FPGA solutions with system-level architecture in collaboration with cross-functional engineering teams.
- Perform synthesis, implementation, timing closure, bitstream generation.
- Debug, test, and optimize for reliability, latency, and throughput.
- Collaborate with PCB designers during board bring-up and hardware validation.
- Contribute to FPGA architecture discussions and help define long-term technical direction within the platform.
- Participate in design reviews and maintain engineering documentation.

## Requirements
- B.S., M.S, or PhD degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering or STEM discipline.
- Strong experience with FPGA design, implementation, and verification using VHDL or SystemVerilog.
- Demonstrated ability to build reliable, high-performance digital communication systems.
- Solid understanding of timing closure, clock domain crossing, and system-level integration.
- Comfortable working in a fast-paced, collaborative environment with evolving requirements.
- Strong debugging and problem-solving skills.
- Knowledge of FPGA timing analysis and timing closure techniques.
- Familiarity with version control tools such as Git.

## Nice-to-Haves
- Experience with Xilinx FPGA ecosystem (Vivado, toolchains, etc).
- In-depth understanding of ethernet and network stack implementation.
- Experience developing flight computers.
- Experience designing solutions for safety-critical real-time systems.
- Experience with AXI4, AXI-Stream, and memory-mapped interfaces.
- Experience using TCL scripting to automate FPGA build flows.
- Knowledge of CI/CD practices for FPGA development.

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