Principal Engineer – Front-End Design

JI060819/01

Purpose of role:

A lead technical planner and contributor on ASIC and IP development projects, working very closely with the programme management and senior design leads to implement and track digital IP designs and also integrate these and 3^rd party designs into customer ASICs and SoCs.

The role involves working directly with customers, IP vendors and architects to define innovative tailored solutions that can be translated into high quality, achievable designs.

The candidate will own and technically lead aspects of a design or ASIC/SoC integration and will lead and monitor the interactions between multi-site engineering teams to ensure efficient communication, resolve design and methodology issues and make effective decisions to ensure projects remain on track with respect to schedules, budgets and quality commitments.

Responsibilities:

• Keep up to date with relevant engineering advances in the field and ensure that Sondrel is kept at the forefront of the state-of-the-art technologies, methodologies and design processes as used in the industry
• Provide technical and practical support to engineering team members as required. Provide training and documentation on methodologies and best practice.
• Work with broader engineering teams and engineering management to define new or improved methodologies and ways of working. Effectively delegate tasks relating to technical design and flow development.
• Work with programme management team to identify risks and opportunities, estimate engineering effort and update on progress against project plans.

Duties & Activities:

• Definition of design intent/microarchitecture and new design methodology and clear documentation thereof.
• Trialling and deployment of industry-leading EDA tools for design quality assurance, power optimisation, constraints generation and synthesis/timing analysis.
• Collate engineering data and provide regular feedback to customers and programme management about plans, risks, issues, progress etc.
• Ownership of design blocks and technical leadership of all frontend aspects of their development from specification through handover with physical design team. Ongoing technical support through to production.
• Represent Sondrel at universities, conferences and meetings and present technical papers.

Qualifications:

• A degree/masters or PhD in either a relevant or non-relevant subject
  

Skills & Experience:

Essential:

• Minimum of 8 years’ experience;
• Very Strong knowledge of digital design concepts and application in complex SoCs
• Ability to work as part of a team and also lead the technical direction of team members
• Solves technical problems of advanced complexity and conveys/applies solutions
• Applies judgment in interpreting results and conducting quantitative analysis
• Interacts with programme management both face-face and using online planning tools
• May manage others on the team
• Provides technical training
• Contributes to technical white papers
• Contributes to sales support as part of a team effort
• Use of Issue and Task tracking tools (e.g Jira)

Desirable:

• HDL coding - VHDL, Verilog, System Verilog
• System design knowledge – clock domain management, reset schemes and power management
• Design for Test
• Validation and Product Engineering
• Linux software frameworks
• Design checking – Lint, CDC
• Power intent– UPF and or CPF
• Synthesis and constraints generation
• SoC level verification – HW/SW co-verification, multi-mode simulation, Gate-level simulation
• Database Management
• Project Planning
• Perl, Python, Java, Tcl, IP-XACT

Attributes:

• Excellent leadership, communication, negotiation and time management skills
• Team organisation and ability to set and change priorities quickly
• Team player and self-motivated
• Ability to motivate a team under pressure
• Organisation and problem-solving skills
• Excellent attention to detail
• Able to work under own initiative
• A willingness to travel on an occasional basis and work the required hours

Remuneration & Benefits:

• Competitive Salary plus discretionary annual performance bonus
  
• Pension Scheme
  
• Flexible working
• Working with the latest technologies