Archangel Lightworks is a connectivity company building wireless technology to create the space-enabled networks of the future. We’re passionate about improving humanity’s communications infrastructure and solving some of Earth’s most critical problems from economic inclusion to climate change. Our start-up is a fast-paced and supportive environment, where you can make your mark as part of a growing team and work on the cutting-edge of innovation.
We’re looking for a contract FPGA engineer with experience in optical communications to provide support for a specific project. The role will include the development of FPGA code for a high-speed optical comms demonstrator system, and the testing of the integration and performance of this system
Requirements:
- HDL code development and IP block integration, particularly for comms and networking protocols
- FPGA development for high-speed comms, including interfacing with Gigabit transceivers
- Experience of high-speed optical comms and associated hardware, including SFP+ / QSFP / CFP transceivers.
- Communications protocols, including forward error correction
- Experience developing with Xilinx FPGAs, and use of the Vivado/Vitis toolchain
- Writing test software to interact with the system during testing and configuration
- Use of network test equipment, experience handling optical fibers, general lab test equipment.
- Documentation of the design to support future extensions
Location: Hybrid. Our office is based in Osney Mead, Oxford. Expectation is at least 1 day a week on site in general, and that integration and test work will need to be performed on site, as needed.
Top Skills
What We Do
Archangel Lightworks is a laser communications company building high-volume, secure, wireless technology to create the space-enabled networks of the future. Today, space and terrestrial networks are not well-connected leading to insecure, insufficient, and vulnerable infrastructure. Nearly 3 billion people are unconnected and many more are under-connected. Subsea cables, which form the backbone of global network infrastructure, are at risk from climate disaster and bad actors. Links between satellites, which offer an opportunity for resilient connectivity, and the ground are reliant on radio, which is bandwidth constrained, finite and not secure. Archangel Lightworks was set up to solve the space-ground connectivity problem. Wireless laser communications (lasercom) technology offers new solutions; however, adoption of the technology has been slow due to availability concerns, lack of interoperability standards, difficulties associated with lasercom on the move, and high production costs. Our tech solves these problems. We are driving down the size, weight, power & cost (SWaP-C) of optical ground equipment to make space-ground lasercom available and affordable. Our core product, TERRA-M is a miniature optical ground station which is approximately the size of a mini fridge. Compared to traditional networks such as radio, the TERRA-M allows more licence-free data transferred at low probability of detection (LPD) and low probability of interception (LPI). TERRA-M brings deployable, resilient connectivity to wherever it is needed, solving some of Earth’s most critical problems from economic inclusion to climate change. Archangel Lightworks is based in Oxford, UK and Archangel Lightworks USA is based in Orlando, Florida.
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