Senior FPGA Programmer

Brooks Automation•Chelmsford, MA

6d•$118,265 - $160,006•Hybrid

About The Position

We are seeking a highly skilled Senior FPGA Engineer to lead the architecture, development, and implementation of advanced FPGA-based systems for next-generation motion control, machine vision, and distributed automation platforms. This role will focus on developing ultra-low-latency FPGA architectures supporting high-speed sensor acquisition, real-time image processing, multi-axis motion control, distributed EtherCAT-based control networks, precision electromagnetic actuation systems, and hardware acceleration of computationally intensive algorithms. The ideal candidate combines deep FPGA expertise with strong system-level understanding of controls, sensors, embedded systems, and real-time deterministic architectures. The role provides significant opportunity to influence product architecture, contribute to intellectual property development, and drive breakthrough performance in advanced automation platforms.

Requirements

B.S., M.S., or PhD in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Robotics, Controls Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
8+ years of FPGA development experience.
Expert proficiency with VHDL, Verilog/SystemVerilog, and FPGA design methodologies.
Strong experience with one or more FPGA families: AMD/Xilinx, Intel/Altera, Lattice.
Demonstrated experience developing real-time FPGA control systems, high-speed sensor interfaces, hardware accelerators, and multi-channel synchronized processing architectures.
Strong understanding of digital signal processing, control systems, motion control, and hardware/software partitioning.
Proficiency with timing closure methodologies.
Experience with simulation and verification, testbench development, and hardware debugging.
Experience with lab instrumentation.

Nice To Haves

Experience in precision motion control systems, semiconductor equipment, robotics, advanced automation, machine vision.
Knowledge of EtherCAT networks, distributed controls, sensor fusion, computer vision acceleration, FPGA-based image processing.
Experience implementing Kalman filtering, state estimation, motor control, electromagnetic actuator control, real-time control loops.
Familiarity with MATLAB/Simulink, Python, C/C++, Embedded Linux.
Experience with Zynq SoCs, PCIe architectures, high-speed memory interfaces (DDR4/DDR5), multi-gigabit serial transceivers.

Responsibilities

Lead development of FPGA-based systems including real-time control architectures, sensor acquisition pipelines, high-speed communication interfaces, hardware acceleration engines, and multi-channel synchronized processing systems.
Design and implement modular and reusable FPGA architectures, deterministic low-latency processing pipelines, multi-clock domain systems, and high-bandwidth data movement architectures using HDL (VHDL and/or Verilog/SystemVerilog).
Develop FPGA solutions for motion control, precision positioning systems, machine vision, high-speed metrology, and electromagnetic actuator control.
Develop FPGA implementations supporting high-bandwidth control loops, current control loops, position and velocity control, multi-axis synchronized motion, and deterministic distributed control architectures.
Implement PWM generation, encoder interfaces, real-time feedback processing, state-space and advanced control algorithms, and control loop acceleration.
Support architectures capable of sub-millisecond closed-loop response, hundreds of synchronized control channels, and distributed real-time execution.
Design FPGA pipelines for high-speed camera interfaces, real-time image acquisition, marker extraction and tracking, edge detection and feature extraction, and sensor fusion architectures.
Develop real-time processing solutions for Gigabit Ethernet Vision, MIPI interfaces, Camera Link, CoaXPress, and custom sensor interfaces.
Implement DMA architectures, frame buffering, hardware image processing accelerators, and deterministic vision-processing pipelines.
Develop FPGA-based communication architectures including EtherCAT, SPI, Parallel SPI, UART, CAN, PCIe, Gigabit Ethernet, and Multi-Gigabit SerDes.
Design distributed synchronization architectures, precision timing systems, networked FPGA platforms, and multi-node control systems.
Support scalable architectures capable of coordinating large numbers of distributed devices.
Collaborate closely with electrical engineers, controls engineers, mechanical engineers, software engineers, and systems architects.
Support FPGA board selection, SoC architecture development, hardware bring-up and validation, signal integrity debugging, and power and thermal optimization.
Interface with ADCs, DACs, sensors, power electronics, motor drivers, and high-speed memory systems.
Lead efforts to optimize FPGA resource utilization, latency, throughput, memory bandwidth, determinism, and power consumption.
Create automated test environments for functional verification, hardware-in-the-loop validation, timing closure verification, and production readiness testing.
Drive technical innovation through patent disclosures, intellectual property creation, architecture reviews, technical mentoring, and best-practice development.
Contribute to next-generation control architectures, vision systems, motion control platforms, and AI-assisted hardware acceleration.