FPGA Intern

Job Description

FPGA Intern | Taara (Google’s Moonshot Factory)

The Tone:
This is an internship at Taara, located in Sunnyvale, CA, with a hybrid work model requiring at least three days in the office. Taara, born at Google’s Moonshot Factory, is dedicated to connecting billions of people globally by developing groundbreaking wireless optical communication and photonics chip technologies using light to deliver faster, cheaper, and more reliable internet, thereby bridging the digital divide. This role is crucial for linking high-level control algorithms with physical hardware by designing and implementing digital gateware. Your work will directly contribute to Taara’s next-generation Free Space Optical products, enabling high-precision laser pointing and signal correction to deliver reliable, fiberless, and high-capacity connectivity.

The TL;DR
• Role: Internship
• Location: Sunnyvale, CA (Hybrid)
• Pay: $7000–$11000 monthly
• Team: Multidisciplinary team of experts in optics, software, and hardware
• Mission: To design and implement high-speed digital gateware that processes sensor data in real-time, enabling precise laser pointing and signal correction for Taara’s optical communication products.
• Tech Stack: SystemVerilog/Verilog, Xilinx development tools, Vivado, Ultrascale+, I2C, SPI, Python, C/C++

What You’ll Actually Do
• Gateware Design: Design and implement digital gateware capable of handling high-speed sensor data in real-time to significantly enhance system performance beyond what software alone can achieve.
• Hardware Integration: Actively engage with physical hardware in the lab, integrating sensors and actuators with FPGAs to rigorously test and validate your designs.
• Algorithm Acceleration: Accelerate algorithms on high-performance FPGAs to enable fast, high-precision pointing of lasers across kilometers of turbulent air and to correct signal distortions for reliable connectivity.
• Design Verification: Develop comprehensive testbeds to validate digital designs through simulation, ensuring reliable performance and drastically reducing debugging time on physical hardware.
• System Integration: Collaborate closely with hardware and software teams to integrate your FPGA solutions into the broader Taara system architecture, ensuring cohesive and efficient operation.

The Must-Haves
• Background: Currently pursuing a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a closely related technical field, with a strong foundational understanding of digital design principles and concepts.
• Experience: Proficiency in SystemVerilog/Verilog for hardware description.
• Skills: Digital design principles, SystemVerilog/Verilog.
• Bonus: Experience with Xilinx development tools and FPGAs (Vivado, Ultrascale+), hands-on experience interfacing serial peripherals (I2C, SPI) with FPGAs, experience interfacing embedded processors with FPGAs, experience simulating and implementing DSP algorithms, experience with closed-loop control systems, or proficiency with programming languages such as Python and C/C++.