Application Engineer - Hamburg

About Axonne

Axonne is a fabless semiconductor startup building Automotive Ethernet silicon for next-generation vehicles. Our PHY transceivers and Ethernet bridges move data from 1G to 10G over a single twisted pair or coax, connecting cameras, RADAR, and LiDAR into the zonal networks that ADAS and autonomous platforms run on.

We are US-based, with ASIC R&D in the US and software in Bucharest. Our System Engineering team sits in Hamburg and Karlsruhe, close to the European OEMs and Tier1s we work with. We are small, and the work you do here lands in a real product.

The role

You are the technical link between our silicon and the engineers designing it into their boards. When a Tier1 or OEM picks up an Axonne PHY or bridge, you get them through bring-up and design-in, answer the hard questions, and make sure the chip behaves in their lab the way the datasheet says it should.

It is a hands-on, hardware-centric role. Most of your time goes to the bench and to the documentation and demos that keep customers moving.

What you will do

• Support customer design teams through hardware bring-up and design-in of our PHY and bridge silicon
• Write the application notes, design guidelines, and bring-up documentation customers rely on
• Debug board-level and signal-integrity issues at the bench with scope, logic analyzer, and multimeter
• Build evaluation setups and demos for customer trials and tradeshows
• Run technical calls with Tier1 and OEM design teams across Germany, Europe, and Asia
• Flash firmware, run scripts, and triage the obvious issues before they reach our firmware and software teams
• Feed what you learn from customers back to our ASIC, firmware, and software teams

What you bring

• A degree in electrical engineering or a related field, or equivalent hands-on experience
• Real bench experience working from datasheets and application notes, comfortable with a scope, logic analyzer, and multimeter. A job, an internship, or something like a Formula Student team all count, as long as it is hands-on
• Comfortable working on Linux, with the analysis tools that come with it such as Wireshark
• Enough software to flash firmware, run a build, and adapt Python scripts. You can read C well enough to follow it
• Familiarity with common interfaces such as UART, SPI, I2C, MDIO, and Ethernet
• Fluent English. German is a strong plus, since we talk to German OEMs often
• The right to work in the EU

Nice to have

• Automotive Ethernet (IEEE 802.3) or multi-gigabit PHY technology
• Camera and video interfaces such as CSI-2, D-PHY, or C-PHY
• Time-sensitive networking, IEEE 1722, or PTP
• KiCad, and signal-integrity or EM tools such as HFSS
• Revision control over GIT

What we offer

• Ground-floor influence on a silicon product that is shipping, not a slide deck
• Room to grow as the company grows
• Flexible working with one day of home office
• Free lunch every Monday in the Hamburg office
• A competitive salary

This is an on-site role in Hamburg, and we are not able to support relocation. Occasional travel is part of the job, mostly within Europe, but most of your time is in the office.

Sound like you?

Send us your CV and a short note on something you have built or debugged that you are proud of.

Axonne is an equal opportunity employer. We welcome applications from everyone and make our hiring decisions based on skills and experience.