Digital Design Engineer in Lausanne

Digital Design Engineer – High-Speed Communications / ASIC
Lausanne, Switzerland | UK options available CHF 120,000–130,000 + benefits
What if the architecture wasn’t already decided before you joined?

I’m recruiting Digital Design Engineers for a small advanced semiconductor R&D team exploring new approaches to high-speed communications silicon.

This is not simply a role where you receive a finished specification and spend the next year implementing one RTL block.

The team is working on new digital and mixed-signal architectures, with the freedom to question existing approaches, investigate new ideas and help turn the strongest concepts into production silicon.

What you’ll work on
You’ll contribute to the digital architecture and RTL development of advanced communications ICs, working closely with analog, architecture and wider design teams.

The work can include:
RTL design and microarchitecture
High-speed digital design
Ser Des and high-speed interfaces
Mixed-signal digital blocks
Digital communications architectures
Design exploration and architectural trade-offs
Taking new concepts from R&D towards implementation in silicon
The projects have a 2–4 year R&D horizon, so there is genuine room to investigate new approaches rather than simply following an existing standard or product roadmap.

Who they’re looking for
You’ll likely come from an ASIC / Digital IC Design background with strong RTL experience and exposure to at least some of the following:
High-speed digital design
Ser Des
Mixed-signal ICs
Communications silicon
Advanced digital architectures
You don’t need to tick every box.

More important is that you enjoy solving problems where the answer isn’t already written in the specification.

Why it’s interesting
The team is deliberately small and collaborative.

You’ll be working closely with experienced engineers, discussing ideas at architecture level, whiteboarding solutions and having considerably more influence over the direction of the design than you might get in a larger organisation.

The objective is also very clear: this is exploratory engineering intended to become real silicon, not research that disappears into a presentation deck.

The primary R&D team is based in Lausanne, with engineers typically onsite around three days per week.

There is also some location flexibility for the digital positions, including opportunities in the UK.

If you’re a Digital Design Engineer who enjoys asking “could we build this differently?”, I’d be very interested in speaking with you please contact Steph Hutchinson.