Junior FPGA Engineer

About the role

DRW, a diversified trading firm, is looking for a Junior or Graduate FPGA Engineer to join its FPGA team supporting trading desks in Asia. This is an entry-level role for recent graduates, interns or engineers with 1-2 years of hands-on experience who want to grow their FPGA design skills in a low-latency, high-throughput environment. You will work closely with experienced engineers across software, trading and hardware teams, take part in the full development lifecycle and gain practical experience in FPGA synthesis, lab bring-up and system testing.

Key responsibilities

• Contribute to FPGA application implementation (RTL development, simulation and verification) under the guidance of senior engineers.
• Run parts of the FPGA tool flow (synthesis, place & route, static timing analysis) and learn to interpret the results.
• Help plan and execute system- and block-level testcases and the laboratory bring-up of new hardware.
• Take part in debugging and characterization of boards and FPGA designs, and support production incidents with senior team members.
• Work with software, network and trading teams to integrate FPGA components into broader systems.
• Research new tools, techniques and FPGA technologies and propose ideas for incremental improvements.
• Produce clear documentation and test reports.

Required profile

• Bachelor's, Master's or PhD degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science or a related field; recent or upcoming graduates welcome.
• 0-2 years of professional experience, or equivalent experience from internships, research or university projects.
• Practical experience writing RTL (Verilog or SystemVerilog); course projects or internship work count.
• Familiarity with FPGA development flows and tools (Xilinx or Intel/Altera) or a strong desire to learn them quickly.
• Good problem-solving, debugging and communication skills, and eagerness to learn and take feedback.

Required skills

• Basic experience with simulation and verification tools (e.g. ModelSim, Questa) or demonstrable coursework or projects.
• Comfortable using Linux and basic scripting (Python, Bash) for test automation and tooling.
• Nice to have: exposure to high-speed interfaces (Ethernet/PCIe/DDR memory) or SoC subsystems, C/C++ for embedded systems, networking fundamentals (TCP/IP) or timing/latency optimization, Git and CI workflows.

What we offer

• Mentorship from experienced FPGA and systems engineers.
• Hands-on learning on real trading hardware and production systems.
• Opportunities for rapid responsibility growth and career progression.
• A collaborative, engineering-driven culture and competitive compensation.