Senior Hardware Design Engineer – Fire & Safety Domain

About Potter Global Technologies & Hinduja Tech

Potter Global Technologies is a trusted global leader in fire, life-safety, and emergency communication systems, known for its reliability, innovation, and strong legacy of protecting people and critical infrastructure. As part of its continued global expansion, Potter is investing in its India engineering presence to strengthen long-term product development capabilities and accelerate innovation for global markets.

In collaboration with Hinduja Tech, an engineering and digital solutions leader within the Hinduja Group, Potter is establishing the Potter India Engineering Center (IEC) in Pune. This center will serve as a key extension of Potter's global engineering organization, bringing together Potter's product vision and domain leadership with Hinduja Tech's strong engineering ecosystem and delivery experience.

This collaboration is intended to accelerate innovation, strengthen Potter's global engineering capabilities, and establish a high-caliber engineering center in India that supports the development of Potter's next generation of fire and life-safety products for global markets.

At the same time, it creates an opportunity for candidates to work in a product-based company environment with the potential for long-term association and meaningful career growth.

About Job Role

We are seeking a hands-on Senior Hardware Design Engineer with 7-10 years of experience to develop, redesign, sustain, and improve electronic products used in Potter's fire and life-safety portfolio. The role supports new product development, product enhancements, value engineering, component-obsolescence resolution, supply-chain risk mitigation, compliance, and production support. The engineer will translate product and system requirements into reliable microcontroller-based hardware and own assigned work packages from concept through release. Assignments may include controller redesigns, platform or processor migrations, communication and supervised field interfaces, power and protection circuits, and improvements driven by cost, availability, quality, or field performance.

Key Responsibilities

Hardware Design and Product Development

• Own hardware work packages for new products, product enhancements, redesigns, sustenance, and value-engineering initiatives.
• Analyse product requirements, system interfaces, reference or legacy designs, field data, regulatory constraints, and manufacturing needs before defining the design approach.
• Develop hardware architectures and trade studies covering microcontrollers, memory, power, sensing, communications, protection, and production-test access.
• Design analog, digital, and mixed-signal circuits for power, clock, reset, debug, sensing, relays, indicators, actuators, communications, and supervised IOs as required by the product.
• Own schematic capture, component selection and derating, design calculations, PCB layout guidelines, grounding, signal integrity, EMC practices, test points, DFM, DFT, and board bring-up.
• Plan and execute processor, component, or platform migrations when required while maintaining applicable product behaviour, interfaces, and safety functions.

Value Engineering and Product Lifecycle

• Evaluate BOM cost and circuit function to identify component commonization, part-count reduction, circuit simplification, and reusable design blocks.
• Resolve obsolete, NRND, single-source, long-lead, or allocation-risk components by identifying and validating suitable alternatives.
• Assess cost, performance, availability, reliability, compliance, schedule, and implementation risk before recommending design changes.
• Support root-cause analysis and corrective action for issues found during development, manufacturing, certification, or field operation.

Verification, Compliance and Release

• Prepare and maintain hardware requirements, interface documents, DFMEA, design-review evidence, verification plans, and traceability through test results.
• Plan and execute functional, power, fault, thermal, communication, transient, ESD, EFT, surge, EMC pre-compliance, and system-integration testing as applicable.
• Support UL, FM, FCC, and other compliance or certification activities through test planning, sample preparation, laboratory support, failure analysis, corrective action, and retest closure.
• Release production-ready schematics, PCB data, BOMs, specifications, test requirements, and manufacturing documentation; support ICT, FCT, pilot builds, and phase-in.

Collaboration and Technical Ownership

• Define and control hardware-firmware interfaces and work with firmware engineers during board bring-up, feature integration, and regression testing.
• Work with validation, compliance, component engineering, PCB layout, suppliers, manufacturing, sourcing, and Potter US stakeholders to close technical issues.
• Lead design reviews for assigned work, communicate risks and status, and present calculations, test evidence, cost impact, and release readiness.
• Guide junior engineers in design methods, laboratory practices, documentation, and structured problem solving.

Qualifications

• 7-10 years of hands-on embedded hardware or electronic product-design experience, including responsibility from requirements through production release.
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Electronics Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Electronics and Telecommunication, Instrumentation, or a related discipline.
• Demonstrated experience designing microcontroller-based analog, digital, and mixed-signal boards and taking designs through prototype, verification, and release.
• Strong knowledge of microcontroller systems, power, clock, reset, debug, memory, GPIO, ADC, timers, communications, sensing, drivers, and protection circuits.
• Practical experience with logic-level compatibility, power sequencing, component derating, grounding, signal integrity, and EMC-aware PCB design.
• Proficiency with Altium Designer or an equivalent schematic and PCB tool, plus common electronic laboratory and protocol-debugging equipment.
• Working knowledge of NPD, VAVE or design-to-cost, DFM, DFT, DFMEA, engineering-change control, BOM release, and root-cause analysis.

Preferred Experience

• Prior product-development experience in the fire alarm, fire and life-safety, emergency communication, building-automation, or a comparable regulated industry is strongly preferred.
• Hands-on experience taking electronic products through UL and FCC compliance or certification testing is strongly preferred; exposure to UL 864 and FM Approvals is valuable.
• Experience with Renesas or other 16-bit or 32-bit microcontrollers and with processor replacement, platform migration, or major board redesign is preferred.
• Experience with fire-alarm communication loops, notification circuits, supervised field circuits, battery-backed products, annunciation, relay control, or low-voltage power systems is advantageous.

Core Competencies

Opportunity for Senior Hardware Design Engineer Fire & Safety Domain