Hardware System Design Engineer, Senior or Staff
$115,600 - $173,400 USD yearly
Originally posted 1 September 2026 by the employer.
About the role
This role is for a Hardware System Design Engineer who will be part of a hardware design team building high-performance FPGA-based emulation platforms, owning the board design process from schematic capture to design verification testing.
What you'll do
- Own the board design lifecycle including schematic capture, PCB stack-up, PCB layout, BOM management, and design verification testing.
- Drive system-level architecture in collaboration with customers, software, and firmware development teams.
- Perform power and signal integrity simulations for 10 Gbps SERDES and high-speed I/O, including model extraction, simulation, reporting, and recommended design changes.
- Lead or support FPGA board design (Xilinx and/or Altera), including DDR3/DDR4/DDR5 discrete memory subsystems.
- Direct lab technicians on system installation, bring-up, and debug of boards and multi-board systems, including root-cause investigation.
- Author and maintain design documentation (HDDs, pinout tables, design review packages) to support cross-team alignment and program reviews.
What you'll need
- Experience with the board design process including schematic capture, PCB stack-up (26 layers), PCB layout, BOM management, and design verification testing.
- Experience with FPGA board design (Xilinx and/or Altera) and FPGA HDL coding.
- Experience with 10 Gbps or higher SERDES board designs and performing power and signal integrity simulations for 10 Gbps signals.
- Experience with circuit and layout guidelines, high-speed design concepts, signal integrity, and transmission line theory.
- Familiarity with I2C, JTAG, UART, SPI, SD Card, PCIe, and eMMC protocols.
- Familiarity with test equipment including oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and protocol analyzers, plus board- and system-level bring-up and debug experience.
- Familiarity with Mentor Graphics DxDesigner/Expedition, Vivado, Quartus, HyperLynx, Sigrity PowerSI/PowerDC, ADS, Ansys HFSS, and SPICE.
Nice to have
- Power supply design experience.
- Experience with signal integrity and PDN (power delivery network) simulations.
- Experience with Design for Manufacturing (DFM) and Design for Test (DFT) reviews with PCB fabricators and contract manufacturers.
- Familiarity with scripting languages (Python, Perl) for design automation, data extraction, or test/analysis workflows.
- Industry certification such as IPC Certified Interconnect Designer (CID) or equivalent.
- Experience supporting a product from concept through production release and factory NPI.
- Experience defining board/system design methodology or reusable IP/standards adopted across multiple programs, and/or prior experience as a technical lead or architect on a hardware program for Staff-level candidates.
Skills: board design lifecycle, schematic capture, PCB layout, signal integrity simulations, 10 Gbps SERDES, FPGA board design
This role has been open 43 days — well below the 110-day median for Hardware Systems Engineering roles.
Hardware Systems Engineering · Serdes Highspeed
|
Open roles in category
87
|
Median days open
110 d
|
Median salary
$199k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | Qualcomm | All employers we track in this specialty (87 roles · 35 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 10 | 87 |
| Open roles in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family | 705 | 6164 · 146 employers |
| Median days open | 189 d | 110 d (+79 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $199k |
Skills observed across this category: board design lifecycle, schematic capture, PCB layout, signal integrity simulations, 10 Gbps SERDES, FPGA board design
Who's hiring in this category
- NVIDIA · 14 open roles · median 78 d
- Qualcomm (this employer) · 10 open roles · median 188 d
- AMD · 7 open roles · median 107 d
- Keysight Technologies · 4 open roles · median 141 d
- Broadcom · 3 open roles · median 198 d
- Intel Corporation · 3 open roles · median 1 d
How we counted: 87 open Hardware Systems Engineering (Serdes Highspeed) roles from 35 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 14 Oct 2026. Specialty figures count only roles carrying this exact specialty label, so an employer's related work in neighbouring specialties is not included there — it is counted in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family row. Figures refresh nightly.