Senior Embedded Software Engineer

Team: Sensing Research

Location: Sydney

Commitment: Full-Time / Permanent

Workplace Type: onsite

What you'll be doing:

• Develop, integrate, optimise and support FPGA firmware for Q-CTRL quantum sensors.Implement and maintain timing-critical digital processing blocks, including filters, decimation and related DSP pipelines.
• Build robust startup, calibration, operation and monitoring routines for autonomous sensor operation.
• Work with research scientists to translate control concepts into reliable, real-time behaviour close to the hardware.
• Integrate FPGA logic with SoC software, enabling reliable, time-synchronised high-bandwidth data capture, DMA transfer and storage.
• Establish and improve simulation and hardware-in-the-loop testing to support continuous integration and confident field deployment.
• Investigate system-level issues across FPGA logic, firmware, electronics, embedded Linux and higher-level software.
• Contribute to architecture decisions that improve reliability and performance in future sensor revisions.
• Document test, validation and operational procedures as part of delivering the quantum sensor package.

Ideally you'll have:

Strong foundations in digital design and embedded systems.
Familiarity with SystemVerilog for implementing and maintaining FPGA logic.
Experience with Xilinx SoCs and Vivado-based development workflows.
Digital signal processing experience, including practical implementation of filters, decimation or related signal-conditioning pipelines.
Experience with simulation and verification workflows such as cocotb.
Familiarity with CI/CD development processes for testing, validation and deployment.
Some familiarity with systems programming languages (for example C, C++ or Rust) to interface with FPGA data paths, including DMA-based transfer.
Curiosity about complex systems and the persistence to understand how hardware, firmware, software and physics interact.
Experience with, or enthusiasm to learn, timing-critical control systems and high-bandwidth data capture or storage.
Familiarity with low-latency and low-level communications such as TCP/IP, SPI, I2C or CAN bus.
Exposure to embedded Linux, customised operating systems or Yocto is useful, but not essential.
Familiarity with GitHub Actions and CI/CD workflows for cloud testing and deployment.
A collaborative approach and the ability to work effectively with engineers and research scientists in an evolving technical environment.