Senior Hardware Engineer

About Ubisense Limited

Ubisense is a company at the forefront of Industry 4.0 and the Industrial Internet-of-Things. We build products that transform physical space into “smart space”, enabling software to see, understand and participate in the real world of people and business activities. In so doing, we augment people and objects with new forms of insight and intelligence that make the environments we live and work in more productive, safe and profitable. This unique ability to connect the physical to the digital has been our driving force for more than 18 years and has enabled Fortune 500 manufacturers like Daimler-Benz, Lockheed Martin and John Deere to revolutionise the way they build our cars, the most advanced aircraft and the machinery that grows our food.

We are a privately held company with around 65 employees, supporting customers across North America, Europe, UK, Japan and the Middle East. We have ambitious and well-funded growth plans, requiring talented people to help execute on our vision. We are looking for people who are interested in the future, who believe that technology will play a fundamental role in improving the world of tomorrow, and who want to be a part of making that happen.

About the role

Our Engineering team, based in Cambridge, is responsible for designing, developing and sustaining our Real-Time Location System (RTLS) products. As a senior RTLS hardware engineer you will be a part of this team, helping to define, create and maintain innovative products to support our customers’ mission-critical operations.

What you will do

Design, development and debugging of RTLS hardware products – as a Senior Hardware Engineer you will normally take responsibility for designs throughout their lifecycle, from definition (in conjunction with Product Management), architecture and design, through release and introduction into manufacturing, and afterwards when supporting our customers.

The Ubisense RTLS platform covers all levels of the hardware stack (RF, analogue, digital, firmware and embedded software) and we expect you to want to become expert in that platform. Thereafter, the role offers considerable scope for the right candidate to take on substantial responsibility for successful future introduction of next-generation products.

Main duties and responsibilities

As an integral part of the hardware engineering team, you will be heavily involved in implementing RTLS hardware product releases, to support the growing number of installations of our products in automotive and aerospace manufacturing applications (approximately 5% of cars built worldwide are now assembled under the control of Ubisense systems).

This requires the ability to work through the full hardware and firmware development lifecycle, and you will be involved in most or all of the following:

• Design of digital, analogue and RF hardware for Ubisense products

• Development of firmware for Ubisense hardware products

• Prototyping of test circuits

• Analysis of circuits and systems to verify performance

• Compliance testing of low-power wireless products

• Support for release management of products

• Support for transfer to manufacturing

• Support for and improvement to products throughout their lifecycle

As a senior member of the engineering team, you will be expected not only to deliver your own designs, but to contribute to the technical direction and engineering quality of the wider team. You will take ownership of complex engineering problems, participate in and lead design reviews, support and mentor colleagues, and help us continuously improve our hardware development practices.

Qualifications

A 1st or 2.1 degree in electronic engineering or similar

Essential skills

• Demonstrable project management skills over the full product lifecycle

• Ability to translate product and system requirements into detailed engineering requirements and hardware architectures

• Ability to evaluate technical trade-offs involving performance, cost, manufacturability, reliability, power consumption and schedule

• Experience of design and implementation of digital and analogue hardware, including schematic capture, component selection and PCB design, PCB bring-up, debugging and design verification

• Embedded systems and combined hardware/firmware systems experience

• C/C++/assembler programming experience in embedded environments

• Python scripting experience

• Familiarity with electronics test and measurement equipment

• Understanding of design for EMC and compliance testing

• Familiarity with build systems (e.g. make), revision control and bug management systems

• Experience developing wireless or RF-enabled embedded products, including RF design considerations, antenna integration and practical RF measurement/debugging

• Experience documenting technical rationale, design decisions and verification results

Desirable skills

• Deep experience in one or more of wireless, microwave RF, sensors and distributed software systems

• High-speed FPGA design skills

• Good understanding of network protocols including TCP, UDP and HTTP

• Development of test systems

• Familiarity with Linux

• Familiarity with Altium Designer PCB tools

• Experience in pairing engineering judgement with AI-assisted engineering tools for development, analysis, documentation and problem-solving

Experience

• Typically three or more years’ relevant professional experience, with a proven track record of delivering substantial electronics design work. Exceptional candidates with less experience will be considered where they can demonstrate strong practical achievements and rapid development.

Skills useful in performing the job

• Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills

• Ability to track down and fix complex hardware and systems problems

• Understanding of commercial factors which drive design decisions

• Good oral and written communication skills

• IT skills (familiarity with Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint)

Personal qualities

• Takes ownership and follows technical issues through to resolution

• Methodical and rigorous while being pragmatic about commercial constraints

• Naturally curious and motivated to understand complex systems in depth

• Collaborative and able to work effectively within a small, experienced team

• Comfortable taking responsibility and making well-reasoned decisions

• Willing to share knowledge, review others' work and learn from colleagues

• Able to balance new product development with the less-glamorous realities of sustaining deployed products

Ubisense is an equal opportunities employer. We welcome applications from everyone and make reasonable adjustments throughout the recruitment process.