Principal FPGA Engineer (Autonomous Drones)

Location: Seattle, WA; on-site

Salary: $110K–$250K annually

Company

hirify.global develops drones, ruggedized communication devices, and 911 response networks that provide real-time visual data to public safety agencies and support first responders.

What you will do

• Lead the architecture, design, and implementation of FPGA systems for video, sensor, and communication pipelines.
• Develop high-speed digital interfaces including MIPI CSI/DSI, LVDS, HDMI, PCIe, and Gigabit Ethernet.
• Implement memory controllers, DMA engines, streaming architectures, and real-time data-transfer systems.
• Optimize FPGA designs for performance, power efficiency, timing closure, and resource utilization.
• Implement FPGA acceleration for image signal processing and video-enhancement pipelines.
• Collaborate with hardware, software, and systems teams, while mentoring engineers and leading technical projects.

Requirements

• Master’s or PhD in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field.
• 7+ years of FPGA design and development experience in complex systems.
• Expert proficiency in Verilog, VHDL, and/or SystemVerilog.
• Strong experience with Xilinx Vivado, Intel Quartus, ModelSim, or QuestaSim, plus Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ or similar SoC/FPGA platforms.
• Experience with high-speed digital design, timing closure, board-level bring-up, lab instrumentation, and debugging complex FPGA systems.
• Experience integrating FPGA systems into embedded platforms and working with real-time image, video, and sensor processing.

Nice to have

• 10+ years of FPGA design and development experience.
• Experience with computer vision, perception algorithms, and low-latency processing for autonomous systems.
• Experience with ARM cores, MicroBlaze, Nios II, RISC-V, OpenGL, GPU hardware acceleration, DDR, SERDES, and multi-gigabit transceivers.
• Experience in aerospace, defense, or safety-critical applications.

Culture & Benefits

• Values include innovation, technical excellence, speed, frugality, and listening to end-users.
• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision plans for employees and families.
• 401(k) plan, parental leave, and flexible time off or paid time off.
• Flexible work environment, free parking, and office refreshments in Seattle.
• Orca pass for employees in Puget Sound.