Senior Hardware Engineer
Cambridge, UK office-based or hybrid
About the company
We are a UK-based R&D subsidiary of our German parent company Maschinenfabrik Reinhausen GmbH, who are a specialist in the design and manufacture of power electronics for high power applications such as power transmission and renewable energy generation.
In Cambridge, we develop technology and contribute to industrial product developments. We are currently a small, friendly team looking to expand our hardware and software capabilities.
Role Summary
We are looking for an enthusiastic hardware engineer, experienced in PCB design and FPGA development of embedded systems. We work on a mixture of R&D and product developments as required by our parent company.
As a team, we develop systems primarily targeted at power electronics applications. We work remotely and come together as required at our office for lab-based work or some face-to-face time. You can choose the working arrangement that suits you best. The only thing we ask is that you are able to attend the office when required for lab-testing. Most weeks this might be a day or two but on occasion could be a full week.
We regularly work alongside our colleagues in Germany and therefore occasional travel is required. They are based in Regensburg, Bavaria, which is a rather nice place to visit and close to Nuremberg and Munich.
Our embedded systems range from small microcontroller (e.g., STM32) based bare-metal and RTOS applications up to larger embedded Linux systems running on multi-core SoCs (e.g., AMD Xilinx Zynq Ultra-scale). Therefore, there is a good variety in the work. For this role we are looking for PCB schematic capture and layout experience and any knowledge of power electronics would be an advantage.
Being able to communicate is important, as the role will involve liaison with software and power electronics engineers in order to elicit requirements. We often work in an agile way although some projects for industrial applications will require more process: documentation, test etc.
If this sounds good, then we would love to meet you and show you more of the interesting work that we do here. We recognize that the traditional technical quiz-style interview doesn’t work for everyone, so we invite applicants to share with us their preferred way to show off their technical skills. We like you to present a project that you have worked on so that we can see what it is like to work with you.
About You
- You have a degree in Electrical Engineering, Electronics, Physics or similar
- You enjoy digital and analogue circuit design
- You understand the need for functional test and verification of circuit performance
- You consider design for manufacture
- You can document and communicate your design ideas with an experienced engineering team
- You have your own ideas but also understand the need to be pragmatic
- You don’t mind helping out with recruitment or coaching junior staff members
- You can organise yourself and manage your own time on a day-to-day basis
Essential Skills
- At least 5 years experience of schematic capture and PCB layout in Altium (or similar)
- Knowledge of PLD/FPGA design including Verilog and/or VHDL
- Experience of bench level testing including use of lab test equipment
- Experience of programming embedded microcontrollers
Desirable Skills
- Power electronics experience, such as DC-DC converters or motor drives
- Software development in C/C++ or python for embedded microcontrollers
- Experience of EMC and environmental testing with external test houses
- Knowledge of communications interfaces such as Ethernet/EtherCAT or MODBUS/TCP
Benefits
- Flexible working
- 25 days/year holiday with ability to buy or sell a week
- Health Insurance for you and your family (including private dental cover)
- Death in Service Benefit (4x salary)
- Employer pension contribution matching employee up to 5%
- Annual performance-related bonus