Senior HW Engineer – PCB Analog Design
- Compensation
- Not disclosed
- Location
- Oxford HQ
- Work setup
- Hybrid
- Seniority
- Senior
- Employment
- Not specified
- Experience
- Not specified
- Category
- Design
- Posted
Skills
Must have
- A degree in electronic engineering or a related discipline, plus extensive experience designing analog and mixed-signal circuits at board level for products that reached production.
- Strong analog fundamentals covering op-amp and amplifier design, feedback and stability, noise analysis, filtering and precision circuit design.
- Hands-on experience designing TIAs or other low-noise, high-bandwidth amplifier front ends.
- Experience interfacing high-performance ADCs and DACs, including driver design, anti-aliasing and reconstruction filtering, clocking sensitivity and reference design.
- Solid knowledge of low-noise power supply design, grounding, shielding and mixed-signal partitioning.
Full description
The Opportunity
At the centre of an optical computer sits a set of circuits that have to read, drive and hold steady some very small, very fast signals: photodetector front ends, laser and modulator drives, precision converter interfaces, and the quiet power and references underneath them. This role owns them, at board level, from the optical requirement through to the production build.
The Role
You will design the board-level analog and mixed-signal circuits that connect our electronics to light, and take them the whole way: specification, simulation, layout guidance, lab bring-up, characterisation and production. You will agree the optical requirements - optical power budgets, bandwidth, noise, linearity - with the photonics and system teams, and turn them into analog architectures and circuit specifications.
What is genuinely hard about it is working at the boundary between optics, mixed-signal and high-speed digital, where noise budgets are tight and the measurement is as demanding as the design. A microvolt-level front end does not care that the same board carries high-current switching rails; getting both right on one stackup is the job.
By month six, you will have characterised at least one full analog subsystem on the bench, correlated it with simulation across corners, and put the layout constraints and test procedures in place that other engineers can follow.
What You'll Do
- Design board-level analog and mixed-signal circuits: photodiode front ends, TIAs, ADC/DAC driver and reconstruction stages, laser drivers, modulator drivers and bias networks.
- Translate photonic system requirements into analog specifications and architectures with the photonics and system teams.
- Design low-noise power delivery for sensitive circuits: LDO post-regulation, filtering, precision voltage and current references, grounding and partitioning schemes.
- Design control loops and precision circuits for photonic components: TEC and temperature control, laser current control, monitor photodiode readout and heater drivers.
- Run circuit simulation and analysis (SPICE, noise, stability, worst-case, Monte Carlo) and confirm designs meet performance across corners.
- Give placement, routing and grounding guidance to the layout engineer, review layouts for analog integrity, and select and qualify analog components through to production.
- Lead lab bring-up and characterisation of analog circuits - noise, bandwidth, linearity, stability, crosstalk - and correlate the results with simulation.
- Work with the ASIC team on chip-to-board analog interfaces, including on-chip versus off-chip analog partitioning.