Senior FPGA Designer

Location

Montreal

Employment Type

Full time

Location Type

Hybrid

Department

Research and Development

About Exegy

Exegy is a global leader in intelligent market data, advanced trading systems, and future-proof technology. Exegy serves as a trusted partner to the complete ecosystem of the buy-side, sell-side, exchanges, and financial services technology firms around the globe. Headquartered in St. Louis with regional offices in North America, the UK/Europe and Asia Pacific, Exegy has the global footprint to deliver world-class support and managed services to its customer base of elite financial market participants.

Exegy’s FPGA engineering team creates and maintains ultra-low-latency FPGA HDL building blocks and network IP cores used across Exegy products and within the nxFramework Firmware Development Kit (FDK). These components support hardware-accelerated solutions for leading financial institutions operating in performance-sensitive trading environments.

The Senior FPGA Designer is a hands-on technical contributor responsible for designing, implementing, verifying, and optimizing complex FPGA solutions. You will work across the full development lifecycle, from requirements and architecture through RTL development, timing closure, board-level validation, test automation, and production support. You will also provide technical guidance to less-experienced engineers and partner with FPGA Architects, software engineers, product teams, and solution teams to deliver maintainable, high-performance designs.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain high-performance FPGA logic and reusable HDL building blocks for ultra-low-latency solutions
• Translate product and technical requirements into detailed FPGA designs, interfaces, implementation plans, and verification strategies
• Develop and review RTL using VHDL and/or Verilog, with a strong focus on latency, throughput, resource utilization, scalability, and maintainability
• Own significant portions of the FPGA development lifecycle, including simulation, synthesis, place-and-route, timing analysis and closure, hardware bring-up, board-level testing, and release support
• Implement and enhance networking and system protocol components such as TCP, UDP, Ethernet MAC/PCS, PCIe, and DMA at multiple speeds
• Create and maintain automated test environments, unit tests, regression suites, coverage metrics, and hardware validation tools using Python and related technologies
• Diagnose complex design, timing, integration, and performance issues across FPGA, hardware, firmware, and software boundaries
• Conduct peer design and code reviews and help establish consistent engineering practices for quality, documentation, testing, and version control
• Collaborate with FPGA Architects to evaluate design tradeoffs and ensure implementations align with broader platform architecture and long-term product direction
• Mentor FPGA Engineers, share technical knowledge, and contribute to onboarding and development of team members
• Partner with product and solution teams to understand customer and business needs, propose practical technical solutions, and communicate risks, dependencies, and tradeoffs
• Monitor developments in FPGA devices, toolchains, networking technologies, and low-latency design techniques and recommend improvements to the team’s technology and methods

Our Ideal Candidate Has

• Degree in Electronic Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related technical discipline
• Typically 5 or more years of professional FPGA design and development experience, including ownership of complex designs through implementation and hardware validation
• Advanced proficiency in VHDL and/or Verilog and the ability to assess RTL for correctness, performance, maintainability, and resource efficiency
• Strong understanding of the complete FPGA development flow, including simulation, synthesis, constraints, static timing analysis, timing closure, place-and-route, and on-board debugging
• Experience developing high-speed networking, data-movement, or system interfaces such as Ethernet, TCP/UDP, MAC/PCS, PCIe, and DMA
• Hands-on experience with FPGA development tools, preferably AMD/Xilinx Vivado, and modern source control and CI practices using Git and Jenkins or comparable tools
• Experience using Python and Linux to support verification, automation, testing, and troubleshooting
• Demonstrated ability to independently solve complex technical problems and communicate clearly with both technical and cross-functional partners
• Professional proficiency in English and French

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience designing for deterministic or ultra-low-latency systems, particularly within capital markets, electronic trading, telecommunications, or another high-performance computing environment
• Experience with FPGA-based packet processing, switching, market data, or hardware acceleration platforms
• Familiarity with SystemVerilog, formal verification, advanced simulation methodologies, or hardware-in-the-loop testing
• Experience mentoring engineers or serving as a technical lead for a project or design area

More about you

• You are energized by technically demanding problems where performance, precision, and reliability matter
• You balance deep technical rigor with practical delivery and make thoughtful tradeoffs without sacrificing quality
• You are comfortable working independently while actively seeking input and sharing knowledge across a collaborative engineering team
• You communicate design decisions, risks, and complex technical concepts in a clear and structured manner
• You are a critical thinker and continuous learner who enjoys exploring new devices, tools, and approaches
• You take ownership of outcomes and remain engaged through implementation, testing, release, and troubleshooting

About Exegy

Exegy is a global leader in intelligent market data, advanced trading systems, and future-proof technology. Exegy serves as a trusted partner to the complete ecosystem of the buy-side, sell-side, exchanges, and financial services technology firms around the globe. Headquartered in St. Louis with regional offices in North America, the UK/Europe and Asia Pacific, Exegy has the global footprint to deliver world-class support and managed services to its customer base of elite financial market participants.

Exegy’s FPGA engineering team creates and maintains ultra-low-latency FPGA HDL building blocks and network IP cores used across Exegy products and within the nxFramework Firmware Development Kit (FDK). These components support hardware-accelerated solutions for leading financial institutions operating in performance-sensitive trading environments.

The Senior FPGA Designer plays a key technical role in designing, implementing, verifying, and optimizing complex FPGA solutions. You will participate in the full development lifecycle, from requirements and architecture through RTL development, timing closure, board-level validation, test automation, and production support.

You will also provide technical guidance to less-experienced engineers and collaborate with FPGA Architects, software engineers, product teams, and solution teams to deliver maintainable, high-performance, and scalable designs.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain high-performance FPGA logic and reusable HDL building blocks for ultra-low-latency solutions
• Translate product and technical requirements into detailed FPGA designs, interfaces, implementation plans, and verification strategies
• Develop and review RTL in VHDL and/or Verilog, focusing on latency, throughput, resource utilization, scalability, and maintainability
• Take ownership of significant portions of the FPGA development lifecycle, including simulation, synthesis, place-and-route, timing analysis and closure, hardware bring-up, board-level testing, and release support
• Implement and enhance networking and system protocol components such as TCP, UDP, Ethernet MAC/PCS, PCIe, and DMA at multiple speeds
• Create and maintain automated test environments, unit tests, regression suites, coverage metrics, and hardware validation tools using Python and related technologies
• Diagnose complex design, timing, integration, and performance issues across FPGA, hardware, firmware, and software boundaries
• Conduct peer design and code reviews and help establish consistent engineering practices for quality, documentation, testing, and version control
• Collaborate with FPGA Architects to evaluate design tradeoffs and ensure implementations align with broader platform architecture and long-term product direction
• Mentor FPGA Engineers, share technical knowledge, and contribute to onboarding and development of team members
• Partner with product and solution teams to understand customer and business needs, propose practical technical solutions, and communicate risks, dependencies, and tradeoffs
• Monitor developments in FPGA devices, toolchains, networking technologies, and low-latency design techniques and recommend improvements to the team’s technology and methods