Principal System Architect

Department: System Engineering

Location: Southampton, UK

Description

This role is part of AccelerComm's Systems Engineering team and provides senior technical leadership across the development and deployment of our communications products and IP. Working across systems, algorithms, software, FPGA and ASIC development, you will help define product architectures and ensure that system, product and customer requirements are translated into practical, scalable implementations.

This role would suit a highly experienced systems engineer or architect who combines deep communications and implementation expertise with the ability to establish technical direction, influence across organisational boundaries and represent complex technology confidently with customers and partners.

Key Responsibilities

As a Principal System Architect, you will provide cross-functional technical leadership across the wider organisation, working with engineering, product and commercial teams to establish technical direction and maintain alignment between customer needs, product strategy and engineering implementation. You will also support other engineers and architects through technical guidance, review and mentoring.

A significant aspect of the role involves providing architectural leadership as AccelerComm's communications IP develops across FPGA and ASIC deployment targets. You will lead the evaluation of architectural options and implementation trade-offs, balancing performance, resource, power, verification and integration considerations. Significant experience of ASIC development for communications or signal-processing technology is essential, together with a strong understanding of the architectural and implementation considerations involved.

You will work across the engineering organisation to provide technical direction on requirements, system decomposition, interfaces, architectural modelling, performance analysis and verification strategy. The role requires the ability to engage at both system and implementation level, working across disciplines to resolve complex technical issues and maintain architectural coherence across products and development teams.

An equally important part of the role is working directly with customers and partners to understand their systems, requirements and deployment challenges. You will lead technical discussions and studies, assess how AccelerComm technology can be applied within customer architectures, and guide integration into FPGA and ASIC-based products. Insight from these engagements will help shape product requirements, architectural direction and longer-term technology planning.


Skills, Knowledge & Expertise

Essential

- Strong understanding of 3GPP 5G NR, physical-layer processing and wireless communication systems.
· Extensive experience in communications signal processing, modem design and radio systems.
· Proven ability to define, analyse and manage complex system and product requirements.
· Proven ability to develop system architecture definitions, including hardware/software partitioning, interface definition and high-level architecture design.
· Ability to lead architectural and algorithm trade-offs, including performance, throughput, latency and resource requirements.
· Significant experience of ASIC development for communications, modem or signal-processing products, with a strong understanding of the architectural and implementation considerations involved.
· Strong understanding of FPGA and ASIC implementation trade-offs, including performance, resources, power and verification.
· Significant experience working directly with customers and partners to understand requirements, evaluate solutions and support product or IP integration.
· Experience leading customer technical studies, architectural discussions or collaborative development activities.
· Demonstrable cross-functional technical leadership, with the ability to influence technical direction and resolve issues spanning engineering disciplines.
· Ability to communicate complex technical concepts clearly and credibly to engineering teams, customers, partners and other stakeholders.

Desirable


· Experience developing communications IP for FPGA or ASIC implementation.
· Experience of satellite or non-terrestrial network (NTN) communications systems.
· Experience of hardware-accelerated communications or digital signal processing implementations.
· Direct experience taking communications, modem or signal-processing products from FPGA-based implementation towards ASIC deployment.
· Good understanding of the process of fixed-point design, modelling and implementation.
· Proficiency in MATLAB, Python and C++ for modelling, analysis and development.
· Experience contributing to product roadmaps, technology strategy or long-term architectural planning.
· Experience mentoring senior engineers or architects and contributing to technical practices across an engineering organisation.


Job Benefits

We pay competitive salaries which depend on skills and experience.

We offer a bonus scheme which pays up to 20% of salary annually, depending on performance. This is in addition to EMI share options, issued periodically. We offer a range of good quality company benefits including pension and private health insurance.

Our offices on Southampton Science Park provide a great working environment, with a coffee shop, bike storage, showers, plenty of free parking and EV charging points.