Lead FPGA Engineer

This opportunity sits within a specialist FPGA engineering group supporting latency-sensitive trading systems. The role offers deep involvement across the full FPGA development lifecycle, working closely with software engineers and front-office trading stakeholders to deliver production-grade solutions.

The successful candidate will contribute to the design, build, testing, and deployment of FPGA-based applications used across multiple trading strategies, with scope to take long-term ownership of critical systems.

• Collaborate with software engineers and trading teams to design and deploy FPGA solutions across trading platforms
• Architect and implement FPGA applications end-to-end, including RTL design, synthesis, place & route, and static timing analysis
• Build and maintain shared testing and verification frameworks to ensure system robustness
• Support software integration by developing APIs and optimising hardware–software interfaces
• Identify and propose innovative solutions to hardware, FPGA, and system-level constraints
• Progress toward technical ownership of major FPGA applications or market-specific platforms over time

• 5–10 years’ experience as an FPGA engineer within defence, aerospace, telecoms, or research-driven environments
• Minimum 5 years of hands-on, full-time FPGA development experience using industry-standard tools and workflows
• Strong VHDL development skills, with supporting Python experience
• Comfortable working in Linux-based development environments
• Strong engineering discipline with a focus on clean design and maintainable code
• Proven experience working in collaborative, multi-disciplinary teams
• Deep expertise in at least one of the following: networking, computer architecture, or verification
• Working-level proficiency in C/C++
• Strong interest in financial markets and electronic trading systems

Contact Ciara Clarke at Harrington Starr for a confidential discussion on this role.