fpga jobs, october 2026
who hires fpga engineers, for what, and at what level
About 1,700 LinkedIn postings across 7 regions (about 1,470 after removing duplicates), 588 Liepin and 61 BOSS直聘 postings for China, and 27 trading-firm postings. Each one is classified by keyword from its full description.
Scraped 21 Oct 2026, postings from the last 30 days.
Defense / aerospace / space FPGA design
safest- 53–74% of FPGA postings in the US, France, UK and worldwide are defense or aerospace; in Germany it's 42%.
- In France, about 40–42% of postings come from consultancies (Serma, Capgemini, Alten, Scalian…), which is the usual first job.
- 49% of US postings mention a clearance, which requires US citizenship.
Low-latency trading (HFT)
highest return- Optiver and IMC list a $200k base for graduate FPGA/hardware engineers in Chicago, and DRW lists $150–250k.
- It's a small market: 4% of US postings and 5% worldwide.
RTL design + verification on AMD SoC FPGAs
most employable- Verilog/SystemVerilog and VHDL, plus Python and Tcl.
- Vivado, Zynq/MPSoC, AXI, DDR, PCIe, Ethernet.
- Board debug and timing closure each show up in about half of Chinese postings (47%, 51%).
FPGA → ASIC prototyping / emulation
highest paying- China: prototyping (原型验证) has a ¥540k median against ¥390k overall, and the top postings reach ¥1–1.5M.
- US: commercial semiconductor roles pay a $176k median, against $164k in defense.
The minimum stack
learn firstDefense electronics + RF/DSP, with verification skills
future-proof- The new hirers are Anduril, CesiumAstro, Blue Origin, SpaceX Starshield, Helsing and Harmattan AI.
- "AI on FPGA" is only 3–5% of postings. AI hiring shows up as chip prototyping instead.
How many junior positions?
These bars show the years of experience each posting asks for (the first "N years" figure in the description). Internships are counted separately. Hover a segment to see the number of postings.
China · Liepin experience field (n=588)
BOSS直聘 (n=61) shows a similar spread: 3–5 yrs 33%, 1–3 yrs 26%, 5–10 yrs 20%, no requirement 11%, new grad 3%. Junior postings ask for the same skills as senior ones, and their median posted pay is about ¥317k. Most juniors are hired through 校招 (campus recruiting).
Each posting gets one primary sector, picked in this order: finance, then defense/aerospace, then semiconductor, and so on. Company "about us" text was removed before matching.
Click a column header to sort by that region. UK cross-check (IT Jobs Watch, 157 permanent ads, median £70,000): Xilinx 28.7%, clearance 23.6%, C 21%, signal processing 18.5%, Python 16.6%, Altera 15.3%, SystemVerilog 9.6%, UVM 7%.
USA · midpoint of posted pay range, by years asked
n=227 postings with a range, after removing duplicates. By sector: defense/aero $164k, commercial semiconductors $176k, HFT $200k. Levels.fyi median total comp is $130k, and Indeed's average is $151k.
China · posted yearly pay (midpoint × 薪 months)
By segment: prototyping ¥540k, AI ¥500k, networking ¥480k, imaging/instruments/industrial ¥420k, telecom ¥390k, aerospace ¥360k, defense ¥300k, domestic-FPGA migration ¥322k.
Junior roles list €36–45k, defense VHDL roles €45–65k, and Toulouse aerospace roles at consultancies €40–45k. Consultancies pay 15–25% less than end clients.
jobvector average €73k (P25–P75 €60–77k), StepStone €51k, 226 open roles on StepStone.
Permanent median £70k (P10 £54k, P90 £90.6k). Contractors make about £600/day.
Pay is the posted range midpoint × the number of 薪 months. 159 of 333 paying companies hide their name.
| Company | Posted | ≈ ¥/yr | Focus |
|---|
- LinkedIn guest search for "FPGA", last 30 days, with every description downloaded. LinkedIn caps a search at about 600 results, so the US is a sample (Glassdoor shows about 3,300 US FPGA jobs).
- A role reposted in several cities (same title and company) is counted once per region: 104 of the 599 US postings were such repeats. Worldwide still overlaps the country samples.
- French and German postings are matched with French and German terms as well (e.g. "contraintes de timing", "Inbetriebnahme", "Signalverarbeitung"). Most French and about half of German postings are not in English.
- Audited 23 Oct 2026 against the re-downloaded descriptions; earlier versions over-counted C/C++ (the French "c'est"), SoC FPGA (any "SoC"), Linux drivers (UVM drivers, vehicle drivers), aerospace (recruiter boilerplate), China SerDes ("高速接口") and China instruments ("数据采集").
- Keyword matching is approximate. "Defense" counts only specific phrases (clearance, DoD, ITAR, "defense systems"…).
- Indeed, Glassdoor, ZipRecruiter and APEC block automated reads, and BOSS直聘 hides salaries. China figures use Liepin.
- LinkedIn Jobs guest API · Liepin · BOSS直聘 · 智联招聘
- IT Jobs Watch · Levels.fyi · Indeed · Glassdoor
- Greenhouse boards: Optiver, IMC, DRW, Jane Street, HRT, Virtu
- HelloWork · Jobijoba · jobvector · StepStone
- Wilson Research 2024 · Anlogic 2027 校招 · KORE1 (recruiter)