Star Catcher Industries, Inc., located in
Jacksonville, Florida, has an opportunity for a
Senior Electrical Engineer - FPGA Firmware to support the development of space-to-space power beaming spacecraft and the Star Catcher Network, its 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 against those requirements.
- 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 the circuit card assembly.
- 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.
Basic Qualifications- Education: Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
- Experience: 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. Understand configuration-upset mitigation and scrubbing where applicable, plus separate risks in user memory, logic, processors, and transceivers.
- 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 (e.g., PCIe, SpaceWire, Ethernet), control interfaces (e.g., I2C, SPI, RS-232/422), and memory interfaces (e.g., DDR3/DDR4).
- Experience with FPGA devices (e.g., AMD Kintex/Virtex UltraScale+, Microchip RTG4 or RT PolarFire) and processor-integrated SoCs (e.g., AMD Zynq UltraScale+ or XQR Versal), or equivalent platforms.
- Familiarity with backplane-based architecture (e.g., SpaceVPX, VPX) and board-to-FPGA interface constraints.
- Experience with NASA/DoD life cycle and technical reviews (e.g., 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.
Help us deploy and scale space infrastructure that will drive our utilization of space forward! We offer a highly competitive benefits package including access to comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage, 401(k) retirement plan, life insurance, and paid parental leave, in addition to other benefits. 
