Senior Electronics & Systems Engineer

Join ONI and Explore the Boundaries of Scientific Discovery!

At ONI, we are driven by a profound mission: to propel scientific discovery and combat diseases by granting everyone the ability to visualize, comprehend, and share the intricate microscopic details of life. Our revolutionary Nanoimager and Aplo Scope stand at the forefront of advancing cellular studies on a molecular level, making substantial contributions to the evolution of scientific knowledge.

We are actively seeking an enthusiastic and self-motivated Senior Electronics & Systems Engineer to join our pioneering team located in Oxford. We believe in the power of relentless curiosity and the pursuit of excellence, and we invite you to join us in shaping the future of scientific exploration and healthcare breakthroughs.

In this role you will be the go-to technical resource for electronics design, working closely with engineering, software and R&D product teams. Electronics design is at the core of the role, but we are looking for someone who enjoys working beyond the boundaries of the PCB - developing embedded firmware, integrating sensors and actuators, and understanding how electronics interact with optics, mechanics, software and the physical world.

You will have significant technical ownership across the product lifecycle, from circuit and system design through prototyping, bring-up, verification and production. You will also develop production firmware and work further up the software stack where needed to integrate, automate and test the systems you develop.

The role is ideal for an engineer who enjoys solving complex multidisciplinary problems, takes ownership of product outcomes and thrives in a collaborative, fast-paced environment.

Your role at ONI:

• Own electronics designs from concept through architecture, schematic design, PCB development, bring-up, verification and production.
• Design robust analogue and digital electronics, including power supplies, signal conditioning, sensor interfaces, communications and control electronics.
• Make appropriate component and architecture choices, balancing performance, cost, availability, manufacturability and product requirements.
• Undertake PCB design and layout as an integral part of electronics development, working with external PCB designers where appropriate, and considering signal integrity, grounding, noise, EMC/ESD, thermal performance and DFM/DFT.
• Work with manufacturing partners and suppliers to ensure designs are manufacturable, testable and robust through production.
• Bring up new hardware and systematically debug complex problems using oscilloscopes, logic analysers, hardware debuggers and other laboratory instrumentation.
• Develop and maintain production embedded firmware, typically for microcontrollers, alongside low-level firmware for hardware bring-up, control, test and diagnostics.
• Develop and debug interfaces to sensors, actuators and other hardware, including analogue front ends, ADCs/DACs and common digital communication interfaces.
• Work with optical and mechanical engineers on optoelectronic and physical-system interfaces, such as photodetectors, lasers and other light sources, cameras, position and temperature sensing, motors, piezos and other actuators.
• Diagnose issues whose root cause may lie in electronics, firmware, sensors, optics, mechanics, cabling, software or the interactions between them.
• Develop test and automation tools, including Python-based instrumentation, hardware testing and manufacturing QA.
• Support verification, EMC/compliance testing, production test, calibration and transfer of designs into manufacture.
• Support electronics throughout the product lifecycle, including investigation of product and manufacturing issues, root-cause analysis, component obsolescence and design changes.
• Apply modern software engineering practices including source control, automated testing and CI/CD, and make effective use of AI-assisted development tools and coding agents to extend and accelerate your capabilities beyond electronics.

We'd expect experience in many of the following:

• Strong analogue and digital circuit design fundamentals.
• Schematic capture, PCB layout and development of multilayer PCBs.
• Power supply design, power distribution, protection and power sequencing.
• Low-noise electronics, grounding, shielding and signal integrity.
• Sensor interfacing, analogue signal conditioning, amplification, filtering and data conversion.
• Microcontrollers and embedded systems.
• Embedded C/C++, including development of robust production firmware and low-level peripheral control, interrupts, timers, DMA and real-time behaviour.
• Developing from device datasheets and MCU/SoC reference manuals rather than relying solely on high-level libraries.
• Interfaces such as SPI, I²C, UART, CAN, USB and Ethernet.
• Practical board bring-up and fault-finding using oscilloscopes, logic analysers, multimeters and hardware debuggers.
• Design for EMC, ESD, reliability, manufacturability and test.
• Taking electronics through prototype, verification, certification and production.
• Git and modern software development practices, and Python or similar for test, automation and instrumentation.
• Working effectively across electronics, firmware, mechanical, optical and higher-level software disciplines.

Additional desirable experience includes:

• Scientific instrumentation, microscopy, imaging or other precision instruments.
• Optoelectronics, including photodiodes, LEDs/lasers, optical power monitoring or camera/image-sensor interfaces.
• Precision or low-noise analogue electronics.
• Motion control, motors, encoders, piezo actuators or feedback/control systems.
• High-speed data acquisition or communications.
• Production test fixtures, calibration systems and manufacturing automation.
• System-level debugging across complex multidisciplinary systems, including electronics, firmware, optics, mechanics and software.
• Using coding agents or other AI-assisted development tools to build test, automation or hardware-control applications.