Hardware Architect

Location: Gorgonzola, Italy

Thales people architect solutions that are relied upon to deliver operational advantage at every decisive moment throughout the mission. Defence and armed forces customers rely on us to deliver the full range of defensive systems for land, sea, and air. From early warning, to threat neutralisation, our platforms cover all levels from very short-range systems, to extended protection across the entire battle-space including Airspace Mobility Solutions, Vehicles and Tactical Systems and Missile Defence, Optronics, and Radar.

Gorgonzola hosts Navigations Air Systems (NAS) domain. The activity of NAS domain: avionics, navigation and radar systems for civil air traffic and technologies supporting the activities of civilian and military pilots, ATC controllers and technicians of several airlines, air traffic control agencies and Air Force around the world. Italy is the Group’s Competence center for the design, production and delivery of Navigation Aids products and Competence Centre for the delivery of non-Radar Surveillance Products.

Thales people architect solutions that enable two-thirds of planes to take off and land safely. Our Ground Navigation portfolio offers a complete range of products which includes the latest generation of ILS, DME, VOR and TACAN systems.

With more than 7,000 Navigation aids and landing systems installed worldwide in 172 countries, we are leading the Navaids market. The second product line of NAS is Non-Radar Surveillance (NRS) with an installed base of more than 2.200 ADS-B and MLAT ground stations.

We are currently looking for a Hardware Architect to join Thales Land and Air Systems in its Navaids Center of Competence Gorgonzola (near Milan). Technically responsible for the hardware architecture and its consistency with the solution, the Hardware Architect coordinates with the solution Engineering Manager and PDA, in order to make sure that the top down refinement of the solution is consistent with the hardware strategy and constraints including COTS selection and components reuse.

**Key Responsibilities and Tasks**:

- Defines Hardware architectures in relation with the PDA and ensures that hardware architecture stability is maintained across lifecycle phases from Bid to Delivery;
- Challenges and approves the technical, technological, and methodological choices taken in respect of the selected hardware architecture
- Conducts hardware architectures and trade-off analysis, and use modelling, simulation and prototyping opportunities as required
- Provides knowledge on state-of-the-art hardware architecting, taking account of future developments;
- Participates to defining the long-term strategy elements for the Hardware Engineering (Core/Non-Core, MTB, etc.)
- Participates to defining the WBS for the Hardware activities
- Prepares the Design & Justification Files (D&JF) and design guidelines
- Guarantees adherence to in-scope standards, reuse policy and product development plans
- Participates to defining the strategy with regards to the evaluation and the deployment of processes, methods, and tools
- Has the ability to make meaningful, balanced, weighted and explainable trade-offs between aspects of cost, customer requirements and technological possibilities
- Influences key technical communities (Technical Directorate, System Engineering, Safety)
- Coordinates and supervises from the technical point of view the development team in the different phases of the solution implementation Experience needed: - Substantial experience in development of complex Radio Frequency hardware. - Experience on new digital enabled integrated RF transceiver architectures or direct sampling platforms
- Knowledge of and experience in: o RF technologies, power amplifiers, LNAs, Filter design and implementation, o Software Design Radio, knowledge of Digital Signal Processing algorithms and waveforms o Strategy of implementation of Signal Processing algorithms in FPGA o RF hardware circuits design and simulation tools like ADS, CST, MATLAB or SPICE
- Knowledge of RF optimization techniques and best practices.
- Knowledge VHDL and FPGA development tools is a plus
- Strong problem solving, debug and failure analysis skills with a solid understanding of core engineering principles.
- Strong communication skills required, including the ability to clearly express technical concepts in verbal and written forms across different management levels.
- Ability to work in team. Taste for international contacts. Manifest the flexibility needed to be integrated in the different stages of a project.
- Technical leadership - with ability to build and sustain good working relationships with staff, peers and managers, customers and other stakeholders.

**Skills and Qualifications**:

- Master’s degree in field with 7+ years’ experience
- Interpersonal skills - the ability to communicate effectively with peers and act proactively within a team environment
- English and Italian fluent is