Hardware Engineer

Perry Weather•Dallas, TX

3d•Onsite

About The Position

Perry Weather is hiring an Electrical Engineer to contribute to its field-deployed weather monitoring and outdoor warning hardware platform, which includes lightning detection, weather sensors, sirens, and strobe warning units. The equipment operates unattended on solar and battery power through extreme weather, and failures must be investigated at customer sites as well as on the bench. The role focuses on PCB verification and manufacturing readiness, component sourcing and obsolescence management, power system design, hardware integration, and root-cause investigation of field issues. The engineer will execute schematic and PCB layout work in Altium Designer under architectural review by the Staff Engineer, support contract manufacturers and PCB fabrication houses, and improve manufacturing processes and testing.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or equivalent hands-on experience.
5–7 years of hands-on electrical or hardware engineering experience, ideally with field-deployed products.
Practical experience using Altium Designer or similar software for schematic capture and PCB layout on shipped products.
Ability to verify board designs against fabrication constraints, including controlled impedance, differential pairs, and power trace sizing.
Experience selecting components from datasheets and sourcing alternates under supply constraints.
Working knowledge of power electronics fundamentals, including regulation, load switching, and battery/solar-powered system design.
Practical experience integrating devices using I²C, RS-485/Modbus, and Ethernet/IP.
Bench instrumentation skills with an oscilloscope, DMM, and electronic load, including measuring current and voltage under dynamic or switched loads.
Experience performing root-cause analysis on returned or field-failed hardware.
Direct experience working with contract manufacturers or PCB fab houses on DFM/DFT, build readiness, or process improvement.

Nice To Haves

Familiarity with embedded C/C++ and embedded Linux, including U-Boot, device tree, and board bring-up, to help distinguish hardware from firmware failures.
Exposure to OTA update or bootloader concepts.
Experience with cellular modems such as Quectel or similar.
Basic Python scripting for test automation or tooling.
Exposure to outdoor or ruggedized enclosure design, solar/battery systems, or safety-critical or regulated hardware.

Responsibilities

Execute schematic capture and PCB layout in Altium Designer for new revisions and design changes, including layout and component placement under the Staff Engineer's architectural review.
Verify controlled-impedance nets and PCB designs against fabrication constraints and documentation, and manage contract manufacturer and fab house submission and review processes.
Review placement and conversion files, including PnP/CPL files, to identify errors before manufacturing.
Source and validate drop-in or near-equivalent component replacements when parts are obsolete or unavailable, and keep the bill of materials current as revisions ship.
Prototype and characterize 12V/24V power architectures, select load-switch and eFuse ICs for switched rails, and characterize battery/solar runtime and current draw across operating modes.
Integrate new sensors and peripherals onto the Custom PCB Carrier using approved GPIO, Modbus RS-485, I²C, and Ethernet/IP interfaces within the platform's defined GPIO and bus budget.
Reproduce field-reported hardware issues on the bench using scopes, DMMs, and electronic loads or shunts; isolate root causes and implement fixes in design or manufacturing revisions.
Own manufacturing process improvements, including grounding and ESD compliance, reducing manual assembly or configuration bottlenecks, and developing an automated manufacturing test fixture with a hardware harness and pass/fail criteria.