Senior FPGA Digital Design & Development Engineer (Hybrid)

Job description

The application window is expected to close on: 02/25/2027This position follows a hybrid work model and requires that you live within commuting distance of our Milpitas, CA office and commute to the office 2-3 days per week. Meet the TeamThe Networking Hardware Engineering (NHE) group creates innovative hardware platforms central to the AI era, powering Cisco’s core Switching, Routing, and Wireless products for organizations globally. NHE serves as the execution engine for Cisco's most strategic hardware initiatives. We partner across silicon, engineering, product management, operations, supply chain, manufacturing, and executive leadership to transform technology strategy into successful product delivery. Our mission is to provide program leadership, governance, transparency, and execution difficulty across highly complex system development programs, shaping the future of hyperscale infrastructure. Cisco’s IoT team develops industrial networking products that connect and protect the infrastructure behind manufacturing, utilities, transportation, and other essential industries. Our portfolio brings together rugged switching, routing, and wireless connectivity to help customers bridge IT and operational technology, automate operations, and build resilient networks for demanding environments. Within the IoT business unit, our FPGA team develops specialized capabilities that help these products meet industrial requirements for reliability, availability, and precise timing. Our work spans Ethernet packet processing, network redundancy protocols, and precision time processing and synchronization. We also provide essential platform functionality, including hardware interfaces, clock and reset control, power sequencing, and diagnostics across multiple product families. You’ll join engineers who work closely with hardware, embedded software, and system validation teams to take designs from architecture and RTL through verification, hardware bring-up, and production release. The work combines new feature development with hands-on investigation of complex system behavior, offering meaningful technical ownership and the opportunity to see your designs contribute directly to reliable industrial operations. Your ImpactAs a Senior FPGA Engineer in Cisco’s IoT team, you’ll develop capabilities that help industrial networks operate reliably, maintain precise timing, and recover from disruptions. Your engineering judgment will shape product architecture, improve design quality, and help solve complex challenges across our industrial networking platforms. You’ll collaborate with hardware, embedded software, and verification teams throughout the product development cycle—from defining requirements and evaluating design approaches to validating hardware and supporting production releases. You’ll take ownership of FPGA features and subsystems while contributing to design reviews, sharing knowledge, and improving how the team develops and delivers products. Your responsibilities will include: Translate system and product requirements into FPGA architectures, detailed designs, and hardware/software interfaces. Develop and maintain RTL for packet processing, network redundancy, precision timing, and platform control functions. Define verification plans and develop simulations that validate functionality, corner cases, and recovery behavior. Perform synthesis, implementation, timing analysis, and timing closure while balancing performance and resource utilization. Collaborate with hardware and software engineers on interface definitions, initialization sequences, diagnostics, and system integration. Support hardware bring-up and troubleshoot issues using simulation waveforms, packet captures, register traces, and laboratory tools. Investigate root causes, implement corrective changes, and validate fixes across affected platforms. Deliver reproducible FPGA builds, validated release images, and clear design and release documentation. Participate in technical reviews, mentor teammates, and improve reusable designs, verification coverage, and development workflows. Minimum QualificationsBachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related discipline with 7+ years of relevant FPGA development experience, or a master’s degree in a related discipline with 4+ years of relevant FPGA development experience, or an equivalent combination of education and practical experience. Experience delivering FPGA functionality through the product development lifecycle, including requirements definition, RTL development, simulation, implementation, hardware validation, and production release. Verilog or SystemVerilog experience in developing synthesizable RTL and maintaining existing designs, supported by experience with digital design fundamentals such as synchronous logic, state machines, buffering, clock domain crossings, and reset strategies. Experience with FPGA development tools, including simulation, synthesis, place and route, timing constraints, and timing closure. Experience with hardware bring-up and system debugging, including investigating interactions between FPGA logic, embedded software, and board hardware. Preferred QualificationsExperience collaborating with hardware, software, and verification engineers to define interfaces, resolve technical issues, and deliver working products. Experience developing FPGA solutions for industrial networking, embedded systems, or other applications requiring high reliability and availability. Experience with Ethernet packet processing, network redundancy and recovery mechanisms, or precision time synchronization and timestamping. Experience integrating Ethernet interfaces, external physical-layer devices, and third-party intellectual property into FPGA designs. Experience with platform management functions, including power sequencing, clock and reset control, peripheral interfaces, and system diagnostics. Experience with multiple FPGA families and vendor toolchains, including evaluating resource utilization and design tradeoffs. Experience developing automated testbenches, regression environments, and reusable verification components. Experience with scripting languages such as Python, Tcl, or shell to automate builds, verification, and debug workflows in a Linux environment. Experience developing reusable FPGA components, supporting designs across multiple product variants, and improving development and release processes. Experience with technical reviews, mentoring, or architecture decisions involving hardware and software teams. Why Cisco? At Cisco, we’re revolutionizing how data and infrastructure connect and protect organizations in the AI era – and beyond. We’ve been innovating fearlessly for 40 years to create solutions that power how humans and technology work together across the physical and digital worlds. These solutions provide customers with unparalleled security, visibility, and insights across the entire digital footprint. Fueled by the depth and breadth of our technology, we experiment and create meaningful solutions. Add to that our worldwide network of doers and experts, and you’ll see that the opportunities to grow and build are limitless. We work as a team, collaborating with empathy to make really big things happen on a global scale. Because our solutions are everywhere, our impact is everywhere. We are Cisco, and our power starts with you. Message to applicants applying to work in the U.S. and/or Canada: The starting salary range posted for this position is $154,900.00 to $225,300.00 and reflects the projected salary range for new hires in this position in U.S. and/or Canada locations, not including incentive compensation*, equity, or benefits. Individual pay is determined by the candidate's hiring location, market conditions, job-related skillset, experience, qualifications, education, certifications, and/or training. The full salary range for certain locations is listed below. For