{"id":3831078,"url":"https://alion.io/job/firefly-aerospace-fpga-development-lead-level-4","title":"FPGA Development Lead (level 4)","company":{"id":63753,"name":"Firefly Aerospace","domain":"fireflyspace.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/firefly-aerospace-com","size_band":"1001-5000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Workday","truth_index":null},"role":"Hardware","role_family":"Hardware","seniority":"lead","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Cedar Park, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":8,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":true,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Formal Verification","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"SpaceWire","optional":false},{"name":"SystemVerilog","optional":false},{"name":"UVM","optional":false},{"name":"Verilog","optional":false},{"name":"VHDL","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-11-05T19:33:51Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-11-05","last_verified_at":"2026-11-08T15:01:05Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":2,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":2},"description":"ABOUT FIREFLY AEROSPACE\nFirefly Aerospace is a space and defense technology company that enables our world to launch, land, and operate in space - anywhere, anytime. As the partner of choice for critical space missions, Firefly is the only commercial company to launch a satellite to orbit with 24-hour notice and the only company to achieve a successful Moon landing. Our launch vehicles, lunar landers, and orbital vehicles provide government and commercial customers with full mission services from low Earth orbit to the Moon and beyond. Headquartered in north Austin, Texas, Firefly is looking for passionate, hardworking innovators to join our team and help fuel our successful trajectory into space.\nSummary\nAs the FPGA Development Lead, you will play a pivotal role in shaping the future of Firefly Aerospace and space exploration. You will serve as a senior technical leader and hands-on contributor, designing, implementing, and verifying high-reliability FPGA designs for our launch vehicles, spacecraft, and ground systems.\nYou will provide technical direction, mentor engineers on complex FPGA problems, and drive best practices while remaining deeply involved in RTL design, verification, timing closure, and hardware integration. This role requires strong technical depth in FPGA development for aerospace applications, the ability to influence and elevate the work of others, and a deep passion for space exploration.\nYou will partner closely with embedded software, hardware, GNC, and systems engineering leads to ensure high-quality, reliable FPGA solutions and continuous improvement of our development approach. Candidates should be prepared for a fast-paced startup environment. This position requires high levels of creativity, flexibility, technical ownership, and collaboration. The ability to communicate effectively within a multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural group is a must.\nResponsibilities\nTechnical Leadership & Mentorship: Provide technical direction and guidance to FPGA engineers. Mentor teammates on architecture, RTL design, verification strategies, timing closure, and debugging. Help grow the technical capability of the team through knowledge sharing, design reviews, and hands-on collaboration.\nTechnical Excellence: Drive adoption of best practices in FPGA development, reliability, and design verification. Act as a lead contributor to the architecture, RTL implementation, and verification of high-reliability FPGA designs.\nHands-on Development: Own significant portions of FPGA designs from concept through implementation, timing closure, lab bring-up, integration, and verification. Contribute directly to RTL coding, constraint development, simulation, and problem resolution.\nProcess Improvement: Help establish and refine clear FPGA development processes for design, verification, timing analysis, and integration that the team can effectively apply.\nCollaboration & Integration: Work closely with embedded software, hardware engineering, systems engineering, and other stakeholders to ensure seamless integration of FPGA designs with overall avionics and vehicle systems.\nQualifications\nRequired\nBachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or related field.\nMinimum 8+ years of FPGA development experience.\nStrong proficiency in VHDL and/or Verilog/SystemVerilog for RTL design.\nExperience with FPGA architectures (e.g., AMD/Xilinx, Intel/Altera, or similar) including timing closure, place-and-route, and constraints.\nHands-on experience with FPGA lab bring-up, debugging, and integration with embedded systems or hardware.\nDemonstrated ability to mentor or technically lead other engineers (formal people management not required).\nAbility to work in a dynamic environment with changing needs and requirements.\nTeam player with a can-do attitude; comfortable contributing both independently and collaboratively.\nEnjoys being challenged and learning new skills.\nExcellent written and verbal communication skills.\nDesired\nMaster’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or related field.\nExperience with high-speed interfaces (SERDES, PCIe, Ethernet, DDR, SpaceWire, or similar).\nFamiliarity with radiation-tolerant or space-qualified FPGA devices and SEU mitigation techniques.\nExperience with verification methodologies (UVM, constrained-random testing, formal verification, or similar).\nIntegration experience with SoCs, embedded processors, or mixed-signal systems.\nExposure to synthesis, static timing analysis, and power/thermal considerations for flight hardware.\nComfortable with scripts and command-line tools (Tcl, Python, etc.).\nPrior experience in aerospace, space systems, or other high-reliability domains.\nFirefly offers outstanding benefits for our employees, including generous health, dental and vision plans with low plan deductibles, parental leave, relocation benefits, educational reimbursement, short term disability, and flexible PTO options.\nTo conform to U.S. Government space technology export regulations, including the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) you must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3), or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.\nFirefly Aerospace, Inc. is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with Firefly is governed based on merit, competence and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability or any other legally protected status.","description_format":"text","description_chars":5700,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":8,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":false},"security_clearance":true,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Parental leave"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":true,"industries":["Aerospace Manufacturing","Launch Services","Space Services"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-11-05T19:33:51Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":90,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.903,"p_room":1,"age_days":2,"expected_fill_days":8,"reasons":["conf:1","velocity","win:early","comp:brand"],"computed_at":"2026-11-08T05:47:12Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/firefly-aerospace-fpga-development-lead-level-4","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/firefly-aerospace-fpga-development-lead-level-4.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-08T18:07:33Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":37952,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-09T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.1,"usd":0.01,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":63753},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=63753"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Ffirefly-aerospace-fpga-development-lead-level-4"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":2,"usd":0.2},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Ffirefly-aerospace-fpga-development-lead-level-4"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.1,"usd":0.01},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Ffirefly-aerospace-fpga-development-lead-level-4"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/firefly-aerospace-fpga-development-lead-level-4\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Ffirefly-aerospace-fpga-development-lead-level-4"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":3831078}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"fireflyspace.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":3831078},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. Docs: https://alion.io/developers"}}