Are you seeking a role that is both challenging and rewarding? Consider Nottingham Spirk where your contributions make a difference. About Us Nottingham Spirk is a Cleveland, Ohio-based, design services consultancy.
Founded in 1972, Nottingham Spirk (NS) helps corporate innovators grow their businesses by partnering with them from design to delivery, to create remarkable product innovations, medical devices, consumer product packaging, and more. With every discipline needed for your project in-house, we help our client-partners disrupt their industries, improve the lives of consumers, and change the world.
With 1,500 issued patents and counting - and a 95% commercialization rate - the things we create make it to market.
Summary Nottingham Spirk is growing. We are seeking experienced, Northeast Ohio Senior Hardware Engineer candidates to apply for this added position. This role is responsible for complete electronics hardware design of consumer, medical, industrial and connected electronic products. Responsibilities include diverse activities such as scoping design effort, block diagrams and system design, component selection and calculations, schematic design, PCB layout, coordinating prototype build and test of completed prototypes. All programs have the goal of commercialization and require the Senior Hardware Design Engineer to manage and direct contract manufacturers up to and including the product launch. The Senior Hardware Design Engineer will often be the technical lead on a complex electronics project. The Senior Hardware Design Engineer's secondary responsibility is to assist in the completion of engineering tasks as identified by the lead engineer or program manager on the team.
Essential Functions - Provides technical leadership for electronics hardware considerations, internally and externally at all stages of a project.
- Designs electronics circuity including PCBs, wiring, and specifying purchased components for a wide range of consumer and medical products.
- Brings-up and Tests new electronics circuit designs using lab equipment such as a multimeter, oscilloscope, spectrum analyzer, VNA, function generator, logic analyzer etc.
- Provides project scope review at early stages of a project or during sales cycle including feasibility analysis, effort estimation and prototype expenses.
- Understands and translates product requirements for a diverse range of electronics and components including microcontrollers, microprocessors, GPUs, NPUs, wired and wireless connectivity modules, GPS modules, external memory, FPGAs, digital displays, cameras, sensors, amplifiers, power supply design, battery management, discrete logic, RF considerations, data acquisition, motor control etc.
- Facilitates product capabilities through hardware interface design including low-level protocols (UART, I2C, SPI), IoT protocols (MQTT) and API's.
- Collaborates with engineers, developers, and designers in other disciplines including firmware/software and mechanical engineering.
- Creates and manages relationships and projects with hardware and software development partners.
- Owns the Hardware design including the architecture, creation of requirements, specifications, and implementation from prototype to production.
- Interfaces with firmware design engineers with emphasis on microcontrollers, microprocessors, wireless radio modules (BLE, WiFi, Cellular), sensors and motion control.
- Development of IoT hardware architecture including consultation with firmware / software team considering stack from local device to the cloud.
- Designs Hardware to support integration of new or existing products with IoT platforms such as AWS, Azure and Google Cloud.
- Plans and implements Hardware for connected device security and OTA Firmware/Software Updates including memory strategy and secure hardware elements.
- Assists electronics team in specifying and purchase of lab test and fabrication equipment to support build and test.
- Communicates expertise and company capabilities to prospective clients of technical and non-technical background.
- Travel: Limited travel within the USA (approximately 10% of time) and limited travel out-of-country (approximately 5% of time.
Requirements Mandatory - BS degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or Systems Engineering.
- Minimum of 10+ years of hardware design experience.
- Extensive experience with electronics hardware design including analog, digital, mixed signal, high speed and RF circuit techniques.
- Skilled at high-level design utilizing functional block diagrams.
- Experience using PSPICE, LTSPICE or similar circuit simulation tools.
- Proficient in schematic design of many common electronics circuits on paper as well as schematic capture tools such as Altium Designer, Mentor Graphics, Eagle, and KiCAD.
- Capable of component placement and PCB routing using above tools. Proficient at directing/reviewing PCB CAD layout activities for design considerations.
- Design of wiring harnesses and other interconnect schemes.
- Excellent knowledge of PCB manufacturing process constraints and fully capable of directing quoting, DFM, modifications and purchase or custom PCB fabricated boards and assemblies.
- Working knowledge of firmware development cycle with capability to modify, flash and test firmware independently when needed.
- IoT system design experience and deep working knowledge of the IoT hardware ecosystem.
- Diverse sensor and actuator knowledge including hardware techniques data acquisition and control.
- Project planning and project leadership skills and experience.
- Experience collaborating and managing outside electronics design and testing resources (e.g. third-party compliance testing labs).
- Experience with ARM-core processors.
- Bluetooth, WiFi and Cellular module design experience.
- Familiarity with digital protocols including: I2C, SPI, USB, RS-232, RS-485, UARTs, CANbus, MODbus, LIN, etc.
- Rapid prototyping of working hardware / firmware prototypes using manufacturer evaluation boards, Raspberry Pi, Ardruino, BeagleBone or similar.
- Expertise in writing and interpreting product requirements, defining specifications.
- Excellent analytical and technical skills.
- Experience working within a multi-disciplinary team environment.
- Ability to multi-task including contributing on multiple projects in a typical work week.
- Excellent interpersonal, verbal and written communication skills.
- The ability and desire to "flex" between military, medical, consumer, and industrial product types.
- Due to compliance with U.S. export control laws and regulations, candidate must be a U.S. Person, which is defined as, a U.S. citizen, a U.S. permanent resident, or have protected status in the U.S. under asylum or refugee status.
Desired - 15 years relevant career experience.
- MS degree in related technical field.
- Consultancy experience with at least one prior employer.
- Experience with Linux scripting and the Linux operating system development.
- Custom RF PCB techniques or Antenna Design experience.
- FMEA training Design for Reliability including reliability test specifications.
- Experience with IoT platforms such as AWS IoT, MS Azure, Google Cloud.
- Firmware Software Languages: Assembly Language, C, C , Java, Python.
- Experience with network security techniques, TLS, Authentication, Public Key Cryptography, Encryption, and Secure Firmware Updates.
- Experience with designing or implementing Machine Learning or other AI methods.
- Experience with MATLAB, Mathematica, Maple, R, Ansys, COMSOL or LabView.
- Experience in FPGA, VHDL coding and DSP design.
- Expert user in one or more EDA/ECAD tools suite (e.g. Altium, Cadence, Eagle, Mentor).
Benefits Nottingham Spirk offers:
- A competitive salary
- Flexible, comprehensive benefit package
- Fun, team-based culture
- Opportunity to learn and grow
- And dog-friendly environment
Apply now.
EOE, Including Disability/Vets