Principal Engineer-Applications

This position sits within the FPGA Business Unit (BU), which designs, develops, and markets low-power, mixed-signal, and system-critical FPGAs, offering a comprehensive portfolio of system and power management solutions.

The role is part of the Customer Applications team, which includes advanced applications engineering (SMEs), technical support, and technical training.

This SME role covers the EMEA region and works closely with the European Field Application Engineering (FAE) organisation. The position collaborates across global teams including Applications Engineering, Product Marketing, and Design Engineering in the USA, Germany, and India.

You will act as a senior technical authority, supporting both internal teams and strategic customers, while driving adoption and enablement of FPGA/SoC solutions. The role offers strong visibility and development opportunities toward technical leadership within the region., Core responsibilities (~75%):

• Own complex technical issues end-to-end, including root cause identification, stakeholder alignment, and driving resolution across global teams
• Act as the technical authority for FPGA/SoC solutions in EMEA, supporting advanced design activities and customer enablement
• Lead development of reference designs, design examples, and technical collateral for FPGA-based systems
• Work across the full FPGA/SoC design flow, including requirements definition, HDL development, simulation, synthesis, place-and-route, timing constraints, and timing closure
• Support embedded processor system design (hard and soft cores), including integration and debugging
• Conduct board-level reviews focusing on signal integrity, power integrity, and high-speed interfaces
• Participate in cross-functional initiatives with product management and engineering to improve existing solutions and influence future products
• Contribute to product validation, characterisation, and rollout activities
• Drive early adoption of new FPGA products, tools, IP cores, and development platforms
• Develop customer-facing materials such as application notes, white papers, and design guidelines
• Train and enable EMEA FAE teams and technical support engineers

Customer escalation (~25%):

• Provide expert-level pre- and post-sales technical support to key customers
• Support advanced design-in activities, including hardware bring-up, system-level debug, and timing closure challenges
• Engage directly with customers on-site or remotely for high-impact technical issues

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field

• Typically 8+ years of experience in FPGA architecture, design, or applications engineering

• Strong hands-on expertise with FPGA ecosystems from at least one major vendor (Microchip, AMD/Xilinx, Intel/Altera)

• Proficiency in VHDL and/or Verilog, and working knowledge of C

• Experience with embedded processors (e.g. ARM Cortex, RISC-V) and software development/debugging environments

• Experience with FPGA design tools such as Libero, Vivado, or Quartus

• Solid lab experience with measurement and debug equipment (oscilloscope, logic analyzer, etc.)

• Understanding of board-level design principles, including power integrity and high-speed signal routing

• Strong system-level debugging capabilities and root cause analysis skills

• Proven ability to independently drive technical issues to resolution across teams

• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills

• Fluent in English

Advanced expertise in one or more of:

• DDR memory interfaces and protocols
• Timing closure techniques
• FPGA synthesis and simulation methodologies
• High-speed serial interfaces (SerDes)
• Embedded processing systems

Are you looking for a unique opportunity to be a part of something great? Want to join a 17,000-member team that works on the technology that powers the world around us? Looking for an atmosphere of trust, empowerment, respect, diversity, and communication? How about an opportunity to own a piece of a multi-billion dollar (with a B!) global organization? We offer all that and more at Microchip Technology Inc. People come to work at Microchip because we help design the technology that runs the world. They stay because our culture supports their growth and stability. They are challenged and driven by an incredible array of products and solutions with unlimited career potential. Microchip's nationally-recognized Leadership Passage Programs support career growth where we proudly enroll over a thousand people annually. We take pride in our commitment to employee development, values-based decision making, and strong sense of community, driven by our Vision, Mission, and 11 Guiding Values; we affectionately refer to it as the Aggregate System and it's won us countless awards for diversity and workplace excellence. Our company is built by dedicated team players who love to challenge the status quo; we did not achieve record revenue and over 30 years of quarterly profitability without a great team dedicated to empowering innovation. People like you., To all recruitment agencies: Microchip Technology Inc. does not accept unsolicited agency resumes. Please do not forward resumes to our recruiting team or other Microchip employees. Microchip is not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes.