FPGA Firmware Engineer

ALTEN Technology USA•San Diego, CA

3d•Remote

About The Position

We’re ALTEN Technology USA, an engineering company helping clients bring groundbreaking ideas to life—from advancing space exploration and life-saving medical devices to building autonomous electric vehicles. With 3,000+ experts across North America, we partner with leading companies in aerospace, medical devices, robotics, automotive, commercial vehicles, EVs, rail, and more. As part of the global ALTEN Group—57,000+ engineers in 30 countries—we deliver across the entire product development cycle, from consulting to full project outsourcing. When you join ALTEN Technology USA, you’ll collaborate on some of the world’s toughest engineering challenges, supported by mentorship, career growth opportunities, and comprehensive benefits. We take pride in fostering a culture where employees feel valued, supported, and inspired to grow. This is a fully REMOTE role. You will be a key contributor to a safety-critical embedded systems engineering team, responsible for the design, implementation, and verification of preliminary FPGA logic for overspeed protection and ARINC 429 communication systems. Working from defined system requirements and architecture provided by the systems engineering team, you will develop and simulate firmware in a structured, DO-254-aligned development environment using Microchip's Libero toolchain.

Requirements

4+ years of experience in FPGA firmware design and verification for embedded or avionics applications
Proficiency in VHDL or Verilog and RTL design methodology
Experience with Microchip/Microsemi Libero SoC toolchain, or demonstrated experience with equivalent FPGA EDA tools (Vivado, Quartus) with ability to transition
Familiarity with ARINC 429 protocol including transmit/receive channel architecture, word structure, and timing requirements
Understanding of digital I/O interfacing, microprocessor bus interfaces, and pin allocation methodology
Experience developing and executing simulation-based verification using ModelSim or equivalent
Ability to work from system-level requirements and architecture documents to implement firmware logic independently

Nice To Haves

Experience with DO-254 design assurance processes for airborne electronic hardware
Familiarity with overspeed protection logic or other safety-critical FPGA functions in aerospace or defense applications
Experience with existing ARINC 429 IP cores and integration into custom FPGA designs
Static timing analysis using SmartTime or equivalent tools
Background in requirements traceability and configuration management in a regulated development environment
Knowledge of Microchip PolarFire or SmartFusion2 device families

Responsibilities

Design and verify preliminary FPGA logic for overspeed protection functions, implementing requirements in firmware based on system engineer-supplied architecture and specifications
Design and verify preliminary FPGA logic for ARINC 429 communication, leveraging existing design where applicable and extending functionality per updated requirements
Develop and execute simulation-based verification plans to validate functional correctness of all FPGA logic prior to hardware integration
Validate all digital inputs and outputs with particular attention to the microprocessor interface on both overspeed and communication FPGAs
Provide complete pin allocation documentation for both FPGA designs in support of hardware team integration
Collaborate with systems engineers to interpret preliminary requirements and translate them into implementable firmware logic
Participate in design reviews, verification reviews, and technical documentation as required by the program schedule
Support FPGA family and device sizing selection in coordination with the systems and hardware teams