UK Junior ASIC Validation Engineer

Edinburgh, GB

Job Description / Skills Required

Avicena is a privately held company developing microLED based ultra-low power high bandwidth interconnects for chip-to-chip communications.  This technology will revolutionize High-Performance (HPC) and Cloud computing, as well as other industries where low power interconnects are critical like camera sensors, autonomous vehicles, and aerospace. Avicena is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California with a development center in Edinburgh, Scotland. The company was founded in 2019 by leading technologists from the optical networking industry with a track record of delivering breakthrough products.  (www.avicena.tech)   

Responsibilities: 

  • Bring up, debug and characterize ASICs on evaluation platforms.  
  • Set up test plans and infrastructure for ASIC IC bring up and characterization and work towards PCBA design and development for verification and characterisation of ASIC performance. 
  • Selection of key test instruments and tools required to complete ASIC bring up, verification and characterization.  
  • Work with test software developer to define and help test software for ASIC debug and characterization.  
  • Analyse test results, diagnose issues, revise test setups and procedures to improve measurements and isolate functional and performance issues.  

Qualifications: 

  • BSc/MSc or higher in Electrical Engineering with analogue and digital circuit design being the primary focus of the course to be able to communicate and liaise with ASIC design engineers. 
  • Experience in the relevant field of evaluation and test engineering is a bonus. 
  • Must be familiar with standard communication protocols such as I2C, SPI, MDIO and ethernet.  
  • Understanding of RF design and testing using various optical and electronic test equipment including oscilloscopes, VNAs and power supplies is desirable.  
  • Working level proficiency in Python for code development to automate product testing and evaluation is expected. 
  • Should be able to ramp up fast enough to be able to help program microcontrollers and facilitate board/ASIC communications for tests and debug. 
  • Flexible, quick learner, ability to work in a fast-paced startup environment.