Hardware Application Engineer VI

FRONTGRADE TECHNOLOGIES • Huntsville, AL

117d • $164,000 - $209,000

About The Position

We’re looking for a highly skilled, customer-focused Hardware Application Engineer (Technical Support Engineer) to join our Technology Office supporting module and subsystem products. You’ll pair deep hardware design expertise with hands-on lab skills to help customers evaluate, integrate, and deploy our platforms. Our focus is to deliver hardware interface solutions, and integration guidance that reduce customer integration time and enable seamless adoption of our innovative hardware into their system architectures. Willingness to travel to customer sites as needed.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree or higher in Electrical Engineering, Electronics Engineering, Computer Engineering, or related field.
• Minimum twelve (12) years of experience in a specialized functional discipline.
• OR (16) years of experience may be considered in lieu of a Bachelors Degree.
• OR (10) years of experience may be considered w/ a Masters Degree.
• OR (7) years of experience may be considered w/ a PhD.
• Familiar with processor architectures: ARM, LEON (SPARC), and RISC-V.
• Strong understanding of power architectures (DC-DC, LDOs, sequencing/supervisors) and clock distribution.
• In-depth knowledge of SpaceVPX (VITA 78); experience with VNX+ (VITA 90.x).
• Familiarity with VPX connectors (e.g., MultiGig RT2) and rugged enclosures.
• Proficient with system and I/O interfaces: SpaceWire, CAN, UART, MIL-STD-1553, PCIe, Serial RapidIO.
• Knowledge of memory and mixed-signal devices: MRAM, FRAM, EDAC-enabled SRAM, ADCs/DACs, and sensor interfaces.
• Familiar with ECAD tools: Altium Designer, Siemens Xpedition (or similar).
• Familiar with FPGA tools: Microchip Libero, Xilinx/AMD Vivado.
• Familiar with debug/bring-up tools: JTAG/SWD, in-circuit emulators; comfort with oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and protocol analyzers.
• Familiarity with Python scripting for hardware automation or testbench support.
• Familiarity with satellite onboard computers (OBCs) and command & data handling (C&DH) subsystems.
• Understanding of radiation effects (SEU, TID) and mitigation (TMR, EDAC, scrubbing); reliability analysis (MTBF, FMEA) and derating practices.
• Familiarity with ECSS/NASA hardware development standards (e.g., ECSS-Q-ST-60, ECSS-E-ST-20).

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to ensure successful system bring-up, integration, and component compatibility (power, clocks/resets, high-speed interfaces).
• Communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholders; represent the product in customer design reviews.
• Work closely with customers and internal teams to troubleshoot, debug, and resolve hardware integration issues; reproduce problems, identify root cause, and validate fixes using lab tools.
• Prepare comprehensive technical documentation: application notes, user manuals, bring-up checklists/guides, schematic snippets, and reference BOMs.
• Partner with software/application engineering to align firmware/BSP/driver interfaces with hardware features and constraints.
• Provide timely, accurate responses to customer inquiries on hardware functionality and system integration; travel to customer sites as needed.
• Diagnosing and resolving system-level signal-integrity issues.

Benefits

• Competitive Benefits: Medical (FSA + HSA), Dental, and Vision
• Immediate 401K Vesting/Matching
• Career Opportunity and Growth
• Tuition Reimbursement
• Student Loan Repayment
• Generous PTO and 11 paid Holidays per year (8 regular and 3 floating)
• 8 weeks of 100% Paid Family Leave
• Profit Sharing Plan applies to all non-Annual Incentive Plan and non-Sales Incentive Plan employees.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: Bachelor's degree
• Number of Employees: 1,001-5,000 employees