Your responsibilities

About the team:

As an Embedded Systems Engineer, you will join the Electronics for Protection (EP) Section of the Machine Protection and Electrical Integrity (MPE) Group within the Technology (TE) Department. The MPE Group supports the operation of CERN's accelerator complex by developing, maintaining and operating state-of-the art hardware and software technologies for magnet circuit protection and interlock systems for the present and future accelerators, magnets test facilities and several CERN hosted experiments.

The Electronics for Protection (EP) Section is responsible for the development, commissioning and operation of quench detection electronics and data acquisition systems used for the protection of superconducting equipment in CERN's accelerator complex and test facilities.

About the project:

As part of the maintenance and upgrades of the LHC, the group is developing a new quench detector for the magnets that are part of the infrastructure. While the project has already started, further design of test methods, firmware verifications, and radiation testing is required. Additionally, there is also a focus on improving the existing test framework (firmware/gateware and hardware) as well.

Your responsibilities:

• Contributing to the design of a radiation test setup and conduct radiation testing of a quench detector prototype at CERN's CHARM facility.
• Helping to enhance and optimise the CI pipeline for FPGA gateware, ensuring high-quality and efficient development.
• Advance the development and improvement of hardware-in-the-loop verification systems for FPGA gateware.
• Contribute to the design and implementation a production and qualification tester for the next-generation LHC base-layer quench detector.
• Provide operational support for the quench detection system in CERN's IT STRING facility.

Your profile

Skills:

• Experience with VHDL and Python;
• Experience with hardware testing, debugging, and validation;
• Knowledge of electronics, measurement techniques, and signal processing;
• Familiarity with FPGA development workflows and verification;
• Familiarity with CI/CD automation;
• Spoken and written English or French, with a commitment to learn the basics of the other language.

Eligibility criteria:

• You are a national of a CERN Member or Associate Member State.
• By the application deadline, you have a maximum of two years of professional experience since graduation in Electronics Engineering (or a related field) and your highest educational qualification is either a Bachelor's or Master's degree.
• You have never had a CERN fellow or graduate contract before.
• Applicants without University degree are not eligible.
• Applicants with a PhD are not eligible.

Additional Information

Job closing date: 28.07.2025 at 23:59 CEST.

Contract duration: 24 months, with a possible extension up to 36 months maximum.

Working hours: 40 hours per week

Target start date: 01-September-2025

This position involves:

• Work in Radiation Areas.
• Interventions in underground installations.

Job reference: TE-MPE-EP-2025-130-GRAE

Field of work: Electrical or Electronics Engineering

What we offer

• A monthly stipend ranging between 5196 and 5716 Swiss Francs (net of tax).
• Coverage by CERN's comprehensive health scheme (for yourself, your spouse and children), and membership of the CERN Pension Fund.
• Depending on your individual circumstances: installation grant; family, child and infant allowances; payment of travel expenses at the beginning and end of contract.
• 30 days of paid leave per year.
• On-the-job and formal training at CERN as well as in-house language courses for English and/or French.

About us

At CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, physicists and engineers are probing the fundamental structure of the universe. Using the world's largest and most complex scientific instruments, they study the basic constituents of matter - fundamental particles that are made to collide together at close to the speed of light. The process gives physicists clues about how particles interact, and provides insights into the fundamental laws of nature. Find out more on http://home.cern.

Diversity has been an integral part of CERN's mission since its foundation and is an established value of the Organization. Employing a diverse workforce is central to our success.