Principal / Lead Hardware Engineer

Principal / Lead Hardware Engineer 
Location: Luton, Bedfordshire (LU1) Duration: 12 Months Onsite: 90% onsite Rate: £95.44ph UMBRELLASecurity: We seek an engineer with recent high-integrity or safety-critical industry experience (defence, aerospace, or similar), or eligible for UK security clearance.The Opportunity
We're looking for an experienced Principal / Lead Hardware Engineer to join a major defence programme developing advanced electronic systems for air, land and maritime platforms.This is a fantastic opportunity to work on complex FPGA and processor-based hardware, contributing throughout the full product lifecycle—from requirements capture and architecture through detailed design, integration, verification and qualification.You'll be working alongside multidisciplinary engineering teams to deliver high-performance electronic hardware for safety and mission-critical applications.Key Responsibilities

Design and develop complex digital and mixed-signal electronic hardware.Develop hardware architectures for FPGA, SoC and processor-based solutions.Produce schematics and support PCB layout for high-speed digital designs.Design and validate interfaces such as DDR memory, PCIe, Ethernet and other high-speed protocols.Integrate hardware with embedded software, firmware and FPGA solutions.Carry out simulation, verification, validation and design analysis activities.Support board bring-up, hardware debugging and fault investigation.Work collaboratively with Systems, Software, Firmware, RF, Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering teams.Support environmental, EMC/EMI and qualification testing.Produce technical documentation throughout the engineering lifecycle.Support system integration, demonstrations and customer acceptance activities where required.
Essential Skills & Experience

Strong background in high-speed digital hardware design within defence, aerospace or other highly regulated industries.Experience designing FPGA and SoC-based hardware (Xilinx, AMD, Intel/Altera or equivalent).Proven experience designing complex multilayer PCBs, including:

High-speed serial interfacesDDR memoryHigh-performance processorsFPGA-based digital signal processing
Experience using schematic capture and PCB design tools such as Altium Designer, OrCAD, Xpedition or equivalent.Hands-on board-level debugging using oscilloscopes, logic analysers and protocol analysers.Experience integrating hardware with embedded firmware and software.Strong understanding of signal integrity, power integrity and timing analysis.Experience supporting verification, validation and qualification activities.Ability to translate system requirements into robust hardware designs.
Desirable Experience

Electronic Warfare, Radar, RF, Communications or Sensor technologies.Development of safety-critical or mission-critical systems.FPGA signal processing.Knowledge of DO-254, DEF STAN, MIL-STD or equivalent industry standards.Hardware design reviews and technical leadership.Design for Manufacture (DfM), Design for Test (DfT) and Design for Reliability (DfR).