Radiation Metrology and Test Engineer
About The Position
Cowboy Space Corporation is hiring a hands-on individual contributor to build and maintain reusable hardware, automation, and measurement systems for evaluating how electronics behave under radiation. The initial focus is a modular motherboard/daughterboard platform for heavy-ion testing of individual electronic components, along with the instrument control, electrical characterization, event capture, and data processing needed to use the platform across devices and test campaigns. The engineer will work with radiation effects engineers to turn test objectives into validated setups, with avionics designers to reproduce relevant operating conditions, and with test facilities to execute campaigns. The role also involves extending and maintaining the test capability as new components and engineering questions emerge. The position is onsite in San Carlos, California, or Kent, Washington. The intended outcome is a reusable component-test platform checked out with representative devices, with demonstrated measurement and event-capture behavior and a traceable radiation-test dataset. Other engineers should be able to reproduce its setup, understand its limitations, and extend it to test additional devices.
Requirements
- A degree in electrical engineering, computer engineering, physics, or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
- Hands-on experience testing electronic hardware under radiation, with an understanding of single-event effects and total ionizing dose.
- Experience designing, bringing up, and debugging PCB-based test hardware, including bias circuits, component interfaces, and electrical measurements.
- Ability to develop maintainable test automation and data-analysis software in Python or a comparable language.
- Practical experience with instruments such as source measure units, oscilloscopes, power supplies, and data-acquisition systems.
- Careful measurement and documentation habits, including checking calibration and setup behavior, preserving raw data, investigating anomalies, and explaining the limits of a result.
Nice To Haves
- Heavy-ion or proton testing at external facilities, including device preparation and beamline setup.
- High-voltage or power-semiconductor characterization, including protection and recovery during testing.
- Embedded C/C++, microcontroller or FPGA interfaces, and instrument-control libraries.
- Radiation test methods and standards, uncertainty analysis, or development of reusable test platforms.
Responsibilities
- Design and bring up reusable test electronics, including motherboards, device-specific daughterboards, bias and protection circuits, fixtures, and interfaces for component radiation testing.
- Document test-electronics interfaces so new devices can be tested without rebuilding the entire setup.
- Develop maintainable software for instrument control, stimulus generation, electrical characterization, event logging, and data reduction.
- Make test runs recoverable and preserve hardware, software, and instrument configurations alongside measurement data.
- Establish calibration and verification procedures for the electrical measurement chain.
- Characterize uncertainty, repeatability, noise, timing, and event-detection limits to distinguish device behavior from test-system artifacts.
- Develop procedures, perform readiness checks, and operate test setups for heavy-ion and other component radiation tests.
- Coordinate sample preparation, beam access, and facility interfaces with relevant specialists.
- Confirm required beam and dosimetry information with facility staff, record exposure conditions and device operating states, and correlate those records with electrical measurements and observed events.
- Characterize devices before, during, and after exposure as required; investigate unexpected results; and deliver reproducible analysis, clear reports, and documented limitations for review with radiation effects and component engineers.
- Improve related characterization benches, data-acquisition tools, fixtures, documentation, and checkout procedures.
- Apply lessons from each campaign to reduce setup errors and make future testing easier to repeat.
Benefits
- Equity in Cowboy Space Corp.
- Employees and their eligible dependents may enroll in medical, dental, and vision insurance.
- 401(k) retirement savings plan.
- Paid time off.
- 10 paid holidays per calendar year.
- Paid parental leave.
- Relocation assistance if applicable.
- Daily lunch in the office and a fully stocked kitchen with beverages and snacks.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Mid Level
Education Level
No Education Listed
