Staff Engineer, FPGA Design (R5347) at Shield AI
Dallas, TX
$150,000–$230,000
Jul 27, 2026
Dallas, TX
Sep 24, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
An FPGA Design Engineer role at a defense-tech company focused on UAV autonomy systems. The engineer will design, implement, verify, and debug FPGA-based digital communication and timing modules for avionics platforms, working closely with hardware, firmware, and software teams through board bring-up, timing closure, and system integration. Suits a candidate with strong digital design fundamentals and hands-on AMD/Xilinx experience.
Senior level · San Diego, CA · Bachelor's required · Full-time
Pay in the description: $150,000–$230,000
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How this req sits in the market our data
Roughly 100 people in the San Diego, CA area plausibly meet what this posting asks for (software developers). range 30–150
Applicant volume Moderate — A normal amount of company. The rare requirements below are what will separate a shortlisted application from the rest.
Rare in this occupation — lead with these, and say what you built with them.
What the occupation pays Median $166,860 (middle half $131,418–$198,246). This posting is about at that midpoint.
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Aug 1, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (6)
The posting does not specify a single work location beyond Shield AI's broad U.S. presence; San Diego, CA is used as the CBSA because that is Shield AI's primary headquarters city.
SOC classification is Medium confidence: FPGA design sits at the boundary between hardware engineering (not in the SOC list) and software/digital design (15-1252). The role primarily involves writing and verifying RTL code and building digital systems, which maps most closely to Software Developers; 15-1299 (Computer Occupations, All Other) is the runner-up.
VHDL and SystemVerilog are listed together as interchangeable options ('VHDL or SystemVerilog') in the required qualifications; they are captured as a single skill with alternatives.
Git is listed under required qualifications with 'familiarity with version control tools such as Git' — the 'such as' qualifier means Git is interchangeable, but the version-control capability itself is a hard gate.
A background check is required per the posting; no active security clearance is gated.
Ignored 1 non-technology phrase(s) as skills (responsibilities/concepts, not named tools): FPGA design.
Read the full posting
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