We are seeking a hands-on technical RF Characterization Engineer to work on RF characterization from IC to system level on implantable biomedical products. These implantable pacemakers and implantable defibrillators save lives and provide therapy for serious medical conditions.

Our devices are complex, low-power, embedded systems and include custom analog, digital, and mixed signal ICs, hybrids, and discrete components. The successful person in this role will have a good RF background with hands-on RF characterization experience and good breadth of electrical engineering knowledge.

The RF Characterization Engineer will comprehensively analyze designs, create appropriate characterization test plans with rationale for choices, critically evaluate results, and trouble-shoot through challenging problems. This person will also work closely with other cross-functional groups such as Design, ATE, Firmware, Clinical Systems, and Manufacturing.

Required Skills:

 MSEE with at least 2 years RF systems experience or BSEE with at least 3 years RF systems experience
 Theoretical and practical understanding of RF at system level
 Hands on RF characterization including use of RF bench equipment
 Strong technical analysis and troubleshooting skills for products containing RF, analog / digital ICs, discrete components, embedded systems
 Excellent interpersonal and communication skills with ability to multi-task
 Track record working collaboratively across functions in successful product development
 Demonstrated ability to organize, analyze, document, prepare for characterization test plans, reviews, and reports
 Ability to pick things up quickly
 Motivated to learn about and ability to lead biomedical product development

Desired Skills:

 RF IC and RF Systems experience including ATE and bench equipment
 Programming skills in C, LabWindows CVI

Senior RF Hardware Engineer
We are seeking a talented and versatile RF Engineer to be a part of our RF Telemetry Hardware organization. Our team is responsible for the RF hardware design for use in implantable pacemakers and defibrillators. These devices save lives and provide therapy for serious medical conditions. The RF telemetry system provides a critical communication link between those implantable devices and external programmers and interrogators.

The successful person in this role will have a solid mastery of RF engineering, with breadth and depth of knowledge across electrical design. In this role, the engineer will work closely with other members of the electrical system design groups, and play a key role in growing our RF telemetry capability.

Responsibilities:

- RF hardware system design for implantable medical devices
- Create RF circuit prototypes for output power measurements, sensitivity and parametric measurements.
- RF laboratory measurements, including:
o Measurement of small antenna performance in TEM cells
o Evaluation of small inductive/magnetic loop antennas.
- Performing studies, RF modeling, simulation and other forms of analysis to predict component, interconnect, system and board level performance and to optimize design around complex requirements.
- Refine and execute methodologies to carry designs into production.
- Interface with vendors for the purchase, evaluation and testing of components.
- Interface with customers, vendors, and other department functions (manufacturing, mechanical designers, etc).
Required Skills:

- BSEE (MSEE preferred) and at least 5+ years of experience in RF design
- Thorough understanding of RF components such as dual directional couplers, splitters, programmable attenuators.
- Excellent RF laboratory skills, including the use of spectrum analyzers, network analyzers, power meters, slide-screw tuners, test automation, etc.
- Experience in antenna matching and matching network design for a miniaturized radio.
- Familiar with Link Budget Analysis, BER, Polarization, free space loss, S-parameters, Smith Charts, Modulation standards and Noise figure calculations.
- Ability to work with mixed signal domains in creating PCB and subassemblies for small production runs.
- Ability to grow and adapt to other work functions.
- Capable of independent work as well as part of small teams.
- Excellent verbal and written communications skills, and ability to work collaboratively in a team environment.
- Demonstrated ability to clearly document design work and present and explain design choices.
- Ability to work as part of a cross-functional and cross-site team, and design circuits with consideration for overall System Requirements

Desired Skills:
- Programming experience in C, C++, LabWindows CVI

Contact Marty at samaritan@staffing.net, 928-759-0022

Job Description

• Design, code and debug firmware applications in various programming languages (C, MatLab)
• Develop unit and system tests for your modules
• Test and tune code using analog and digital lab analysis equipment
• Participate in build and test automation and other efficiency improvement initiatives
• Review new product requirements, provide feedback, and contribute to project planning activities
• Work closely with the field applications team to review input from customers and help respond to their short and long-term needs

Job Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in EE or equivalent (Master’s degree preferred) and 4 or more consecutive years of professional experience
• Excellent algorithm design and implementation skills including coding, testing, debugging, and tuning
• Experience with Windows and Linux development environments and some scripting languages
• Strong background in communication theory – especially,
• Signal processing
• Cellular wireless standards (2G, 3G, and 4G, including CDMA, WCDMA, EVDO, HSDPA, TD-SCDMA, WiMAX, and LTE; usage scenarios and application of related test and measurement solutions)
• Good communication and technical reporting skills

Contact Marty , 928-759-0022, samaritan@staffing.net

This position is with a leading semiconductor company that develops ICs for communications, computing, and more. You can work in San Jose or Philadelphia.

Staff Analog/Mixed Signal IC Design Engineer
This job requires interaction with marketing, application, product and design engineering to define, design and test PLL based frequency synthesis products as well as other mixed signal IC products.

The successful candidate will be familiar with all phases of the design of mixed signal integrated circuits. The below skills are essential:

HPSICE Simulation
Mixed mode chip level simulation experience.
Cadence or similar schematic capture
Layout supervision. Layout experience is a plus.
Verilog digital simulation experience is a plus.
Layout parameter extraction and simulation.
Knowledge of as many of the following as possible: LCVCOs, Power amplifiers, Mixers, Low noise crystal oscillators, MEMS interface circuits, temperature sensors, Ultra low power analog and digital circuits, DLL’s, PLLs, OPAMPs, data converters, bandgap references, delta sigma converters, fractional N frequency synthesis.

An approximate order of priority would be:
1. Mixed Signal Chip Level Simulation Experience.
2. HSPICE/Spectre circuit simulation.
3. Verilog Simulation
4. Familiarity with digital design flow is a plus.
5. Familiarity with PLLs and/or DLLs used for frequency synthesis
6. Familiarity with delta sigma modulation.
7. Familiarity with temperature sensing techniques desired
8. A/D design experience especially delta sigma oversampling types

BSEE required, MSEE preferred.
5-10 years experience.

Contact: Marty

samaritan@staffing.net 928-759-0022

Power IC Test Engineer
As a Power Management Test Development Engineer, you will design component-level circuits for precision parametric measurement, dynamic signal analysis, and develop automated test system software for our analog and mixed-signal integrated circuits. Our engineers use high-speed DSP-based state-of-the-art automatic test equipment like the Teradyne Eagle. As a member of this engineering team, you will be involved in all phases of product development, including definition, design for testability, test hardware and software design, hands-on debug, characterization, manufacturing release. You will be an important part of an experienced business unit that introduces custom analog ICs to the Automotive market.

Requirements:

 7+ years industry experience with mixed signal testers, Teradyne Eagle ETS preferred.
 Excellent understanding of Power Management products and their corresponding test strategies, including LDO’s, Buck and Boost regulators, Charge Pumps, Battery Chargers, ADC, USB interface.
 Familiarity with C, C++, Visual Basic or similar programming languages.
 Understanding of design for testability (DFT) implementation & strategies, capability to provide input to design groups to ensure reliable and accurate production testing. />- Hands on experience with lab equipment: Oscilloscope, Power Supplies, DVM, etc.
 Good communication skills and ability to work and contribute in a team based environment. Good working communication (both written and verbal) in English is required. />- Ability and desire to hire or train junior and senior level engineers.
 Experience with production test, yield improvement, cost reduction and quality control.
 Experience managing group of engineers.
 BSEE required, MSEE preferred.

Contact Marty at samaritan@staffing.net or 928-759-0022

We are looking for ASIC/SOC Design Engineer that will be involved new low-power techniques and technologies in communications chips and front-end design flows.

Experience

- Understanding of electrical engineering concepts, circuit analysis and logic design skills.
- Familiarity with advanced low power techniques and high speed clocking desired.
- 8-10+ years experience doing low power digital ASIC design.
- Programming languages: VHDL, Verilog, Perl, C, C++, C-shell, UNIX.
- Tool Familiarity: Modelsim, VCS, Debussy, Spyglass, PowerTheater, Synopsys DC, PrimeTime, PTPX and MS-Office.

Contact Marty at samaritan@staffing.net or 928-769-0022

We have multiple needs with leading companies in the San Jose, CA area for both Applications Engineers and Field Applications Engineers that have experience with microcontrollers.

Minimum of three years of board-level application/product design/support experience with emphasis on embedded control (8/16/32 bit microcontrollers and analog).  proficiency in embedded C and assembly programming required. Must possess excellent group and interpersonal communication and presentation skills.

Contact Marty at samaritan@staffing.net, 928-759-0022

It’s no surprise that semiconductor companies generally pursue the same type of skills in engineers at relatively the same time. Companies like Broadcom, Qualcomm, Nvidia, Apple, AMD, and a few others develop microprocessors and SOCs targeting the same markets with their products. They compete for the same IC design and verification talent and so we are seeing more cases where engineers are getting multiple offers. This same pattern exists with the Analog/Mixed Signal IC companies such as Linear Technology, Maxim, Texas Instruments, Volterra, Monolithic Power, Cirrus Logic, Fairchild, and others. This works out good for the interviewing engineer but adds significant pressure  to the Design Manager who is trying to tapeout new chips and get them to market on time.  As this pattern continues we are likely to see the “Perfect Candidate” syndrome lose steam.

As we continue to contact hiring managers and candidates each week we hear the same message in that the candidates are overworked and not advancing on a career path that they had hoped for. They are working lots of hours and pressed for deadlines and they just don’t feel appreciated. Now is the time to seek for new opportunities and act when you identify the new jobs. The general consensus among other recruiting colleagues is that we are entering a “Candidate’s Market” where multiple job choices are available.

Hiring managers still seem to be highly selective when interviewing candidates requiring them to be dead on for the position, having all the skills listed on the original job description. As we make our way out of the Great Recession there will again be significant competition for key, critical technical skills. In fact, we are already seeing companies like Qualcomm, Broadcom, AMD, Nvidia, Apple and a few other contenders all competing for the same design talent. These major players are all busy designing the latest and greatest processors for the mobile processing world. There is a limited supply of these designers AND the US government continues to limit the quantity of H1B visas allotted each year. It’s likely that the hiring managers will be less selective in the future or their jobs will go unfilled for many months which will result in missed deadlines and late product releases to market ..