What are the responsibilities and job description for the Principal Hardware Engineer - Board Design position at AlphaPoint?
Principal Hardware Engineer — Board Design
We are a company building custom ARM-based hardware to safety-critical standards of reliability and security. We design and build our own boards, not integrate someone else's.
You will be our founding hardware hire — the person who makes the hardware real: silicon selection, board architecture, schematic, layout, power, EMC, bring-up, and design for manufacture and test, in a domain where reliability and security are the product, not features. You'll work alongside our established in-house firmware team.
What you will own
Board architecture & design
Bring-up, validation & manufacture
Reliability, security & safety by design
AI-accelerated engineering
What we need to see
Required
We are a company building custom ARM-based hardware to safety-critical standards of reliability and security. We design and build our own boards, not integrate someone else's.
You will be our founding hardware hire — the person who makes the hardware real: silicon selection, board architecture, schematic, layout, power, EMC, bring-up, and design for manufacture and test, in a domain where reliability and security are the product, not features. You'll work alongside our established in-house firmware team.
What you will own
Board architecture & design
- Silicon selection and board architecture: processor and MCU choices, module-vs-chip-down trade-offs, boot straps, debug topology, connector strategy.
- Schematic capture and PCB layout end to end: component selection with lifecycle and second-source awareness, multi-rail power-tree design and sequencing, clock distribution, reset architecture, stackup planning with the fab.
- High-speed digital done correctly: impedance control, length matching, return paths, SI/PI budgets for interfaces like Gigabit Ethernet, PCIe, USB, and memory.
- Design for demanding environments: derating, worst-case analysis, thermal, protection circuits, and EMC/EMI pre-compliance from rev A rather than as a rescue.
Bring-up, validation & manufacture
- Lead bench bring-up: first power-on, rail and sequencing checkout, clock/reset verification, interface validation with scope, logic analyzer, and JTAG.
- Build the validation story: designed-in test points, bring-up checklists, test fixtures, and a path to production test (ICT/flying-probe/functional).
- Own DFM/DFT and the fab/assembly relationship: panelization, BOM health, alternates, revision discipline from rev A to production.
Reliability, security & safety by design
- Reliability as a design input: schematic-level FMEA, single-point-of-failure analysis, watchdog/supervision circuits, brown-out behavior, graceful degradation.
- Hardware support for security architecture: secure elements, debug-port lockdown, tamper considerations, clean separation of trust domains on the board.
- Regulated-domain discipline — traceability, evidenced design reviews, worst-case and derating analysis — so future certification (ISO 26262, IEC 61508, DO-254, EN 5012x) is a gap analysis, not a redesign.
AI-accelerated engineering
- Use Claude Code as a core instrument: automating BOM and netlist checks, design-rule and review checklists, datasheet digestion, test-plan and bring-up-script generation, documentation — while owning every design decision that ships.
- Build the team's playbook (skills, CLAUDE.md conventions, guardrails) so AI tooling accelerates safety-critical hardware work without compromising rigor.
What we need to see
Required
- Designed and shipped multiple custom (non-devkit) digital boards as the responsible engineer — schematic and layout — including at least one embedded Linux-class board around silicon from a major ARM vendor: NXP, ST, TI, Renesas, Microchip, or similar.
- Proven high-speed digital competence: impedance-controlled routing, length matching, SI awareness for interfaces like Gigabit Ethernet, PCIe, or USB 3 — with boards that passed EMC on an early rev.
- Strong power-integrity and power-tree design: multi-rail PMIC-based designs, sequencing, and the analysis to prove margins rather than hope for them.
- Owns bring-up personally: methodical bench debugging with scope, logic analyzer, and JTAG.
- Shipped hardware under a functional-safety or airworthiness regime: ISO 26262, DO-254/DO-160, IEC 61508, EN 50126/50129, or IEC 61513/60880.
- Demonstrably expert with Claude Code — real workflows applied to hardware engineering, not just chat usage.