Firmware Engineer - Data Acquisition (EP-CMD-2025-155-GRAP)

Your responsibilities:

Are you a passionate firmware developer who enjoys developing complex digital electronics applications and working with state of the art FPGA technology? Join us in developing the custom electronics and corresponding firmware that will power the data acquisition system (DAQ) of the upgraded Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at the High-Luminosity LHC.

We are upgrading the CMS experiment, and in particular the data acquisition, to handle the high data rates expected from proton-proton collisions in the upcoming High-Luminosity LHC phase. As part of this effort, we're commissioning new custom electronics boards and designing new network and processing firmware to enable the collection and selection of data from CMS at an unprecedented input rate of up to 80 Tb/s.

You will design and develop the firmware that deals with the transport and aggregation of data, using state of the art FPGA boards to implement modern network protocols in firmware. You will also have the opportunity to contribute to the R&D work for future DAQ electronic boards.

Responsibilities:

• In collaboration with other members of the group and others, develop the data aggregation and transport firmware that collects CMS data from the detector, and related control and configuration logics.
• Contribute to the testing and commissioning of the CMS DAQ custom electronic boards.
• Provide support to the CMS community for the commissioning of their systems with the DAQ readout boards produced by the group.
• Participate in the research and development for future custom DAQ electronics, including the implementation of modern network protocols in FPGAs.
• Contribute to the installation and commissioning of the DAQ system during the period 2026-2028.

Your profile:

Skills:

• Extensive experience with firmware development using VHDL and/or other hardware description languages (HDLs).
• Experience with the development of firmware for high-speed digital electronics applications, in particular in the area of network protocols and related ancillary services.
• Experience with modern software suites for analysis, simulation, and synthesis of HDL designs (e.g. Xilinx Vivado).
• Use of collaborative development environments (git, gitlab) as well as CI/CD techniques.
• Some experience with development of custom high-speed digital electronics boards is a plus.
• Strong team collaboration skills and effective communication of work, including in presentations.
• Spoken and written English, with a commitment to learn French.

Eligibility criteria:

• You are a national of a CERN Member or Associate Member State.
• You have a professional background in Software Engineering or Applied Physics (or a related field) and have either:
  • a Master's degree with 2 to 6 years of post-graduation professional experience;
  • or a PhD with no more than 3 years of post-graduation professional experience.
• You have never had a CERN fellow or graduate contract before.