Hardware Engineering Intern (EE)

Overview

Keysight is a mission-critical design enablement partner for organizations solving the world’s most complex engineering challenges. With deep engineering expertise and leading design, emulation, and test solutions, our ~16,800 employees help customers in over 100 countries accelerate innovation across communications, automotive, energy, quantum, aerospace and defense, semiconductor, and artificial intelligence markets. Learn more about what we do.

At Keysight, people come together to explore new ideas, challenge what's possible, and advance the technologies defining the future. Here, you'll find opportunities to do your best work, take your career further, and thrive in an award-winning culture. Learn more about our benefits.

This position is based in Santa Rosa, in the heart of California’s beautiful wine country and home to Keysight’s corporate headquarters and many product-development R&D labs. The Digital and Photonics R&D team develops and produces some of the world’s highest-performance oscilloscopes - giving early-career engineers the opportunity to learn from experienced specialists while contributing to real products and challenging measurement problems.

You will join a collaborative environment where learning is part of the job. Experienced hardware, signal-integrity, FPGA, software, and measurement specialists will provide technical guidance, design feedback, and hands-on mentorship as you build confidence and depth. You’ll gain experience with advanced hardware, modern design and simulation tools, and state-of-the-art laboratory equipment while contributing to the communications-electronics measurement challenges of today and tomorrow.

We are seeking an Electrical Engineer who is excited to grow their hardware-design skills while helping design, integrate, and validate high-performance electronic hardware for advanced instrumentation and measurement systems. This opportunity is especially well suited to a recent BS or MS graduate with strong fundamentals and meaningful hands-on experience from internships, university research, labs, or engineering projects. You do not need to arrive as an expert in every technology listed below. We are looking for curiosity, practical problem solving, a willingness to learn, and enthusiasm for working with experienced technical specialists who can help accelerate your development.

Responsibilities

What You’ll Do:

• Contribute to the design and development of high-speed board-level digital and mixed-signal hardware, including multi-GHz designs and applications approaching 10 GHz.
• Learn and participate across the hardware-development lifecycle, from architecture and component selection through schematic capture, PCB/PCA implementation, board bring-up, characterization, validation, and troubleshooting.
• Develop experience with circuits ranging from basic RLC networks to high-speed op-amps, filters, low-noise oscillators, microcontrollers, FPGAs, ADCs/DACs, memory, and power-supply conditioning.
• Design and evaluate clock and timing circuitry, including oscillators, PLLs, clock generators, buffers, synchronization, distribution, and jitter-sensitive circuits.
• Apply and deepen your understanding of high-speed signal-integrity and noise-control principles.
• Develop robust power architectures incorporating DC/DC converters, LDOs, sequencing, decoupling, grounding, and low-noise power distribution for sensitive analog, digital, FPGA, and clock circuitry.
• Partner with PCB and signal-integrity engineers on materials, stack-up, impedance targets, placement, high-speed routing, via structures, connectors, grounding, power planes, and return paths.
• Learn how PCB materials, packages, connectors, launches, vias, and other interconnects influence electrical behavior at multi-GHz frequencies.
• Participate in pre-layout and post-layout design reviews and, where applicable, use tools and models such as SPICE, IBIS/IBIS-AMI, S-parameters, and SI/PI simulation to predict and correlate hardware performance.
• Perform hands-on board bring-up and troubleshooting using advanced lab equipment such as high-bandwidth oscilloscopes, spectrum analyzers, VNAs where applicable, TDR/TDT techniques, logic analyzers, DMMs, and power supplies.
• Investigate and solve hardware challenges involving signal integrity, timing, jitter, clocks, power integrity, interfaces, FPGA behavior, embedded firmware, and PCB implementation - with support and mentorship from experienced engineers.
• Collaborate with software and FPGA engineers on device initialization, register configuration, diagnostics, communication interfaces, and hardware/software integration.
• Participate in multi-functional peer design reviews and use measurement results to improve subsequent hardware revisions.
• Support hardware verification, design documentation, design-for-manufacturability, EMI/EMC activities, and transition to production.

How You’ll Grow:

• Learn directly from experienced engineers through collaborative design reviews, lab work, troubleshooting, and technical discussions.
• Build breadth across digital, analog, mixed-signal, signal-integrity, power-integrity, FPGA, and embedded-system domains while developing deeper expertise in the areas that interest you most.
• Take on increasing ownership as your skills grow - from contributing to individual circuits and measurements to driving larger pieces of a hardware design.
• Strengthen your engineering judgment by connecting simulation, design decisions, and real laboratory measurements on production-relevant hardware.
• Develop communication and collaboration skills by working across disciplines and participating in peer reviews with specialists throughout the development process.

Qualifications

• BS or MS in Electrical Engineering, Electronics Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related discipline.
• Hands-on hardware experience gained through internships, university research, laboratory work, student teams, personal projects, or professional engineering experience.
• Strong digital-electronics fundamentals and a practical foundation in analog and mixed-signal circuitry.
• Some experience with schematic design, PCB/PCA development, board bring-up, measurement, troubleshooting, or root-cause analysis through academic, project, internship, or professional work.
• Foundational understanding of transmission lines, controlled impedance, termination, reflections, crosstalk, return paths, and PCB parasitics.
• Interest in developing deeper expertise in signal integrity and power integrity for high-performance hardware.
• Familiarity with high-speed digital interfaces through coursework, projects, research, internships, or professional experience.
• Familiarity with clock/timing concepts such as oscillators, PLLs, clock generation/distribution, synchronization, and jitter.
• Enthusiasm for hands-on laboratory work and systematic troubleshooting.
• Ability and willingness to work across hardware, software, and FPGA boundaries when diagnosing complex system behavior.

Preferred Qualifications:

We encourage you to apply even if you do not check every box below. These are areas you may already know or have the opportunity to develop on the job.

• Academic, project, internship, or professional exposure to multi-GHz signals, fast edge rates, high-speed serial interfaces, or design techniques relevant to approximately 10 GHz operation.
• Exposure to high-speed ADCs/DACs and FPGA-based acquisition or signal-processing hardware.
• Familiarity with SERDES or multi-gigabit serial links.
• Familiarity with S-parameters, VNA measurements, TDR/TDT, eye diagrams, jitter analysis, or channel characterization.
• Exposure to ADS, SystemVue, S-parameter models, or SI/PI simulation tools.
• Understanding of how PCB dielectric properties, insertion loss, copper loss, surface roughness, connectors, vias, and interconnect discontinuities affect high-frequency designs.
• Exposure to EMI/EMC design or troubleshooting.
• Experience with Python, C/C++, MATLAB, or similar languages for hardware characterization, diagnostics, data analysis, or test automation.
• Experience through coursework, research, internships, or projects involving electronic instrumentation, measurement systems, data-acquisition hardware, or other high-performance electronic products.

Why This Role:

This role is designed to help you grow from strong engineering fundamentals into confident, independent hardware design. You’ll work alongside experienced engineers who can coach you through unfamiliar technical challenges, provide constructive feedback, and help you understand not only how a design works, but why key engineering choices are made. As your experience develops, you’ll have opportunities to take increasing ownership, expand your technical depth, and follow your designs from concept and simulation through lab validation and into real products used by customers around the world.

The level of the role will be based on applicable experience, education and skills; most offers will be between the minimum and the midpoint of the salary range listed below.

CA pay range MIN $39.53 per hour to MAX $42.57 per hour

Careers Privacy Statement***Keysight is an Equal Opportunity Employer.***