Micro Electronics Engineer

Aurora is an established supplier of skilled manpower to ESA and in particular at ESTEC and ESAC. Aurora has the opportunity to expand our support to ESA in the domain of TEC-EDP – Electromagnetics Components Data & Power Systems Engineering, supporting the Microelectronics Section.
Happiness of our employees has proven key to obtaining excellent results and a client who also regards us highly for excellent service.

Overview

Provision of VLSI (ASIC & FPGA) technical expertise to Projects involving requirements analysis, performance and budgets analysis, writing and assessment of VLSI specifications; review, evaluation and checking of industrial contractor’s VLSI designs. Identification of design deficiencies and problem areas and proposals for their solutions.

Design, analysis, verification of VLSI systems for control and data processing applications, and/or signal processing using industrial standard tools, hardware description and programming languages.

Specific Requirements/tasks

• Technical and administrative management of the ESA SystemC and synthesizable VHDL IP Core pool of designs. This work will involve: optimisation, update and overall maintenance and of the ESA VHDL IP Cores databases, provision of technical support to ESA IP Cores users (performing analysis and finding solutions to problems in VHDL code, documentation or design methodology) holding a strong collaboration with our Contracts department in arranging and solving licences and patent issues. Advertising the ESA IP service (website, workshops, etc.), handling IP cores requests and their distribution.
• The post holder will support ASIC and/or FPGA technology developments for R&D and /or projects, supervising that good design practices and manufacturing and test methodologies are applied. In addition, independent verification (through code inspection, simulation and timing analysis) and validation (through HW tests) will have to be carried out for some ASIC and FPGAS developments.
• Support development contracts regarding the above areas, act as the activity technical responsible, maintain interfaces with the prime contractors, participate in progress meetings and reviews, as requested, and provide appropriate feedback on the achieved progress and discussions.
• When supporting projects, interface with ESA’s project teams, the prime and lower level contractors, participate in progress meetings and reviews, as requested by project work, and provide appropriate feedback on the achieved progress and discussions.

Specific qualification requirements

• Master’s degree in Electronics Engineering or Physics, specialized in analog/mixed-signal/RF microelectronics, with five or more years of experience in at least three of the following domains:-
  
• Transceiver (RFIC) integrated circuit blocks; low noise amplifiers, power output stages, up/down conversion stages, filters, limiters, voltage/digital controlled oscillators, charge-pump, fractional and digital phase locked loops.
• Transceiver optical/photonic (PIC) integrated electronic circuit blocks related to semiconductor photonic microelectronics; trans-impedance amplifiers, samplers, clock and data recovery, continuous-time linear equalizers, (de)modulators, phase locked loops.
• Mixed-signal circuit design, simulations and layout with Cadence Virtuoso, Spectre, SpectreRF, Mentor/Siemens EDA Calibre or equivalent tools.
• Electromagnetic simulation with Keysight ADS and/or Ansys HFSS or equivalent tools for package and PCB signal insertion/return loss, integrity, electro-magnetic interference/cross-talk/isolation optimisation.
• Transceiver IC electrical functional, performance and environmental testing.

Important additional assets would be:

• Experience package design tools such as Cadence APD/SiP or equivalent for QFN, CSP and/or SiP package.
• Experience with spectrum and vector network analysers for measurement of IC/package/PCB s-parameters, linearity (P1dB, HD, IMD, IIP2/3, EVM, ACPR), noise figure, resonance measurements/characterisation for high speed interface performance validation, model extraction for frequency/time domain electrical simulations.
• Knowledge of deep submicron SiGe BiCMOS and FinFET technologies.
• Knowledge of standards for wireline physical layer of OIF CEI, Ethernet IEEE 802.3, PCIe.
• Knowledge of semiconductor photonic microelectronics.
• Knowledge of standards for wireless physical layer of IEEE 802.15(a) and/or 802.11.
• Knowledge of high-speed optoelectronic devices (e.g., lasers, detectors, modulators), coherent transmission.
• Experience with VHDL-AMS, Verilog-AMS mixed-signal hardware description language.
• Experience of development, licensing and re-use of Intellectual Property (IP) cores.
• Knowledge of quality standards ESCC and ECSS applicable to VLSI ICs for space.
• Knowledge of the space environment and its effects on microelectronics devices and radiation effect mitigation techniques.
• The candidate should have good inter-personal communication skills and high motivation to work in a multi disciplinary and international environment with confidence and autonomy.
• Knowledge of another member state language is considered an asset.
• Fluency in English (both written and spoken) is mandatory.

NOTE: for candidates with less than 10 years experience, the relevant academic transcripts must be provided in order to give a more complete candidate profile at the selection stage.

Legal and Security Requirements

• All applicants must be legally allowed to work in The Netherlands
• Applicants are required to provide a copy of their passport and degree certificate. Aurora will validate the Degree with the issuing University and provide evidence to ESA.
• Prior to issuing a letter of employment the applicant shall provide to Aurora a recent official document declaring that they are of good conduct from the country where currently resident.

Location

The work will be performed at the European Space Technology and Research Centre (ESTEC) at Noordwijk, The Netherlands.

Contract

• The selected candidate will receive good remuneration  in line with ESA Job Class.
• Will be registered for both social security and tax in the Netherlands.
• The standard working hours are 40 per week. There are 12 public holidays and an additional 30 annual days holiday.
• Training to improve efficiency and provide strength for future career are of course included.
• Aurora assists with relocation both with support and financially.
• Aurora contributes to a company pension scheme.

To be considered  apply for this Position

Prior to 06 February 2023, please apply via our Job Application form quoting TEC-EDP-909B (RT-C/TEC-EDM/00909B) as reference.

Aurora will agree conditional employment terms and conditions with candidates before presenting them by 07 February 2023, 13.00 hours.

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