Hardware Engineer

About the role

We are looking for an experienced Hardware Engineer to own signal integrity (SI) and hardware robustness for high-speed, in-vehicle communication links within Ford's network communications hardware team. Our team is responsible for ISO Layer 1 and 2 of networking. We work on finding and developing the right networking technologies for Ford’s next-generation electrical architecture.

Responsibilities

• Conduct design reviews of ECU circuit designs to ensure they meet industry standards and automotive requirements for SI, EMC, and electrical robustness.
• Run simulations to catch potential issues early, and follow up with lab measurements to validate.
• Define SI budgets for different parts of the system (board, cable, connector, etc.), keeping jitter, noise, crosstalk, and EMI/EMC in mind.
• Create board-level requirements for layout, interconnects, routing, and components.
• Create design verification test methods and run tests based on industry standards and internal requirements.
• Lead functional failure root-cause analysis and corrective actions for prototypes and production vehicles.
• Lead component-level qualification of networking components for use in Ford products by reviewing EMI/EMC, interoperability, and other conformance reports.
• Work closely with other Product Development teams (like EMC, Electrical Distribution Systems, and Vehicle Validation) to ensure SI is considered throughout the whole process.
• Provide technical guidance to Product Development teams on feasibility, design alternatives, and design oversight for in-vehicle network implementations.
• Collaborate with software and firmware teams during hardware bring-up and testing.
• Build strong relationships with silicon, cable, and connector vendors to evaluate and introduce emerging technologies.
• Contribute to industry standards efforts to reduce component cost, improve test automation, and address common automotive challenges in collaboration with industry experts.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering or a similar technical field.
• 3+ years of experience in electronic hardware design, mainly focusing on complex high-speed digital and mixed-signal designs.
• 2+ years working with SI simulation or PCB design tools (e.g., Altium Designer, Mentor Graphics, Cadence Allegro, HyperLynx, SIwave, Polar Instruments).
• 2+ years of hands-on lab experience using equipment like oscilloscopes, Vector Network Analyzers (VNA), Time Domain Reflectometers (TDR), and doing circuit board rework.
• Familiarity with standard automotive communication interfaces (CAN, LIN, SerDes, Ethernet).
• A solid grasp of transmission line theory, S-parameters, bit error rate (BER) testing, crosstalk, characteristic impedance, eye diagrams, and time-domain analysis.
• Good understanding of EMC/EMI principles in automotive settings.
• Experience with high-reliability electronics for high-volume production, including using DFMEA and Worst-Case Analysis (WCA).

Qualifications

• PhD with 3+ years of relevant hardware/SI experience, or Master’s degree with 7+ years of relevant hardware/SI experience.
• 5+ years of experience with SI simulation and PCB design tools.
• Strong background in transmission line and electromagnetic theory.
• Familiarity with how typical vehicle electrical architectures are built and the automotive development process.
• Experience with networking hardware architectures, topologies, and protocols.
• Experience with EMC/EMI standards and testing (like Ford FMC1278, ISO 7637, CISPR 25).
• Experience capturing and writing technical requirements and specifications.
• Comfort using vehicle diagnostic tools to troubleshoot network issues.
• Prior involvement with standards organizations like IEEE, SAE, ASA, or the OPEN Alliance.

Skills

• Hands-on experience building and testing high-performance compute systems and high-speed digital interfaces (like PCIe, USB, Ethernet, FPD-Link, etc.).
• Background in guiding or mentoring other engineers.

Benefits

Immediate medical, dental, vision and prescription drug coverage
Flexible family care days, paid parental leave, new parent ramp-up programs, subsidized back-up child care and more
Family building benefits including adoption and surrogacy expense reimbursement, fertility treatments, and more
Vehicle discount program for employees and family members and management leases
Tuition assistance
Established and active employee resource groups
Paid time off for individual and team community service
A generous schedule of paid holidays, including the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day
Paid time off and the option to purchase additional vacation time.

Pay

This position is a salary grade range of 7 – 8 and ranges from $99,600 - $192,900. Final determination of salary grade will be based on candidate's skills and experience, and base salary will be set within the applicable range according to job scope, responsibility and competitive market value.

Schedule

This position is hybrid. Candidates who are in commuting distance to a Ford hub location may be required to be onsite four or more days per week.