About the RoleWe are seeking a Principal/Staff Electrical Engineer to own the architecture, design, validation, and productization of our core electronics systems-and to build the electrical instrumentation that makes our science faster and more reproducible. You will work across mixed-signal design, power, high-speed digital, ASIC/FPGA integration, automated test, and manufacturing transfer. In parallel, you will work directly with scientists and platform engineers to replace fragile bench setups with calibrated, reusable electronics, characterization rigs, trigger/clock systems, test fixtures, and automated validation workflows. The goal is not simply to help debug experiments; it is to engineer away recurring setup and measurement work so scientists get meaningful time back while confidence in the data improves. You will own the full electronics lifecycle, manage critical vendor and CM relationships, and set the standard for electrical engineering excellence at Merge.
In this role, you will:- Architect, design, simulate, lay out, bring up, and verify complex electronics integrating custom ASICs, FPGAs, MCUs, high-speed digital interfaces, low-noise analog, clocks/triggers, and power delivery.
- Own critical PCBAs and system-level electrical architecture, including SI/PI, grounding, clocking, EMC/EMI, thermal/electrical interactions, interconnect, and DFM/DFT tradeoffs.
- Develop and deploy automated test and characterization infrastructure, including custom test hardware, integration firmware, and Python/C/C++ tooling for bring-up, verification, data capture, and manufacturing test.
- Build scientist-facing electronic instrumentation-signal-conditioning modules, calibration fixtures, sensor/actuator interfaces, trigger/clock distribution, reference standards, custom DAQ/test boards, and other reusable hardware that turns expert-dependent bench setups into repeatable workflows.
- Define quantitative performance and acceptance criteria for those systems, including noise, gain, linearity, bandwidth, dynamic range, timing skew/jitter, channel variation, drift, calibration, and measurement uncertainty as appropriate; validate with data and document procedures so another user can reproduce the result.
- Own the technical relationship with design vendors and PCBA assembly/test houses, defining DFT strategies, inspection/test criteria, yield targets, failure-analysis loops, and production release requirements.
- Collaborate closely with Mechanical, ASIC/FPGA, Firmware, Software/Platform, Clinical, and scientists to ensure electrical systems meet device-performance, measurement-quality, usability, and experimental requirements.
- Mentor engineers and establish best practices for design reviews, documentation, verification, test automation, and cross-functional hardware integration.
You might thrive in this role if you have:- Deep experience designing complex electronic systems and a track record of personally taking multiple hardware designs through architecture, board bring-up, debug, verification, and manufacturing transfer.
- Advanced mixed-signal expertise: strong low-noise analog and/or power fundamentals combined with high-speed digital integration, clocking, SI/PI, grounding, and dense-system judgment.
- Strong hands-on debugging instincts and comfort using oscilloscopes, spectrum/network analyzers, logic analyzers, electronic loads, precision sources/meters, and custom test setups to isolate root cause.
- Practical proficiency in Python and C/C++ for hardware bring-up, automated characterization, test control, and integration.
- A systems mindset toward instrumentation: you care about calibration, uncertainty, repeatability, observability, documentation, and whether the next scientist can trust and reproduce the measurement without you.
- Experience delivering manufacturable designs and working directly with vendors/CMs through release, test development, yield, and reliability issues.
- Empathy for scientists and other technical users; recurring bench requests make you want to build a durable instrument or platform rather than become the permanent human workaround.
- Bonus: experience with ultrasound, imaging, scientific instrumentation, lab automation, medical devices, implantables, or large-channel-count acquisition systems.
If you're excited about this role but don't meet every qualification, please apply. As we build, we're hiring for complementary strengths to form a high-impact team.
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