Senior FPGA Designer

Exegy•Montreal, QC

28d

About The Position

Exegy’s FPGA engineering team creates and maintains ultra-low-latency FPGA HDL building blocks and network IP cores used across Exegy products and within the nxFramework Firmware Development Kit (FDK). These components support hardware-accelerated applications for leading financial institutions operating in performance-sensitive trading environments. The Senior FPGA Designer is a hands-on technical contributor responsible for designing, implementing, verifying, and optimizing complex FPGA solutions. You will work across the full development lifecycle, from requirements and architecture through RTL development, timing closure, board-level validation, test automation, and production support. You will also provide technical guidance to less-experienced engineers and partner with FPGA Architects, software engineers, product teams, and solution teams to deliver maintainable, high-performance designs.

Requirements

Degree in Electronic Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related technical discipline
Typically 5 or more years of professional FPGA design and development experience, including ownership of complex designs through implementation and hardware validation
Advanced proficiency in VHDL and/or Verilog and the ability to assess RTL for correctness, performance, maintainability, and resource efficiency
Strong understanding of the complete FPGA development flow, including simulation, synthesis, constraints, static timing analysis, timing closure, place-and-route, and on-board debugging
Experience developing high-speed networking, data-movement, or system interfaces such as Ethernet, TCP/UDP, MAC/PCS, PCIe, and DMA
Hands-on experience with FPGA development tools, preferably AMD/Xilinx Vivado, and modern source control and CI practices using Git and Jenkins or comparable tools
Experience using Python and Linux to support verification, automation, testing, and troubleshooting
Demonstrated ability to independently solve complex technical problems and communicate clearly with both technical and cross-functional partners
Professional proficiency in English and French

Nice To Haves

Experience designing for deterministic or ultra-low-latency systems, particularly within capital markets, electronic trading, telecommunications, or another high-performance computing environment
Experience with FPGA-based packet processing, switching, market data, or hardware acceleration platforms
Familiarity with SystemVerilog, formal verification, advanced simulation methodologies, or hardware-in-the-loop testing
Experience mentoring engineers or serving as a technical lead for a project or design area

Responsibilities

Design, develop, and maintain high-performance FPGA logic and reusable HDL building blocks for ultra-low-latency applications
Translate product and technical requirements into detailed FPGA designs, interfaces, implementation plans, and verification strategies
Develop and review RTL using VHDL and/or Verilog, with a strong focus on latency, throughput, resource utilization, scalability, and maintainability
Own significant portions of the FPGA development lifecycle, including simulation, synthesis, place-and-route, timing analysis and closure, hardware bring-up, board-level testing, and release support
Implement and enhance networking and system protocol components such as TCP, UDP, Ethernet MAC/PCS, PCIe, and DMA at multiple speeds
Create and maintain automated test environments, unit tests, regression suites, coverage metrics, and hardware validation tools using Python and related technologies
Diagnose complex design, timing, integration, and performance issues across FPGA, hardware, firmware, and software boundaries
Conduct peer design and code reviews and help establish consistent engineering practices for quality, documentation, testing, and version control
Collaborate with FPGA Architects to evaluate design tradeoffs and ensure implementations align with broader platform architecture and long-term product direction
Mentor FPGA Engineers, share technical knowledge, and contribute to onboarding and development of team members
Partner with product and solution teams to understand customer and business needs, propose practical technical solutions, and communicate risks, dependencies, and tradeoffs
Monitor developments in FPGA devices, toolchains, networking technologies, and low-latency design techniques and recommend improvements to the team’s technology and methods