Senior Spacecraft Avionics Hardware Development Engineer
About The Position
As a Senior Spacecraft Avionics Hardware Development Engineer at Varda, you will design and deliver flight-critical electrical hardware for the satellite bus, reentry vehicle, and customer payloads, owning your hardware domain from schematic capture through flight qualification. You will define subsystem requirements based on high-level mission and company objectives, design to those requirements, and ensure the manufactured system meets them. You will also establish safe operating criteria and support mission operations in assessing the risks of operating near those criteria’s limits. The role involves designing and building electrical hardware that is tested beyond expected flight conditions, investigating failures, and supporting hardware use across Varda’s teams. You will collaborate across disciplines, lead product acceptance and qualification testing, guide system-level integration testing, and mentor junior engineers.
Requirements
- B.S. in Electrical or Computer Engineering or a related engineering discipline.
- 5+ years of direct experience designing electronics hardware—including schematic capture, PCB layout, board bring-up, and environmental qualification—for aerospace, automotive, or other high-reliability industries.
- Demonstrated experience contributing to complex electronics systems from design through production or deployment.
- Advanced PCB design expertise and knowledge of high-speed signal integrity, power and grounding, and electromagnetic compatibility.
- Experience taking complex PCB designs through fabrication and assembly.
- Expert user of Altium and/or KiCad EDA suites.
- Strong hands-on laboratory experience with electronic test equipment, including oscilloscopes, function generators, benchtop digital multimeters, and power supplies.
- Experience programming in Python, MATLAB, or another scripting or data-analysis language.
- Demonstrated experience implementing hardware layers for multiple onboard and over-harness communication protocols, such as SPI, RS-422, and 1000BASE-T.
- Experience designing analog and digital filtering and mixed-signal circuits.
- Power electronics design experience, including load switches and switch-mode DC:DC converters.
Nice To Haves
- Industry-leading electronic circuit design and analysis skills.
- Strong supporting general knowledge of physics, mathematics, and chemistry fundamentals for designing electronics that experience unique environments.
- Understanding of aerospace sensor and actuator technologies, including RTDs, pressure transducers, brushless motors, solenoid valves, thermocouples, stepper motors, and rotary or linear encoders.
Responsibilities
- Design PCB-level electronics throughout the lifecycle, including schematic capture, layout, design validation, fabrication and assembly, and manufacturing test.
- Support avionics architecture trade studies, analyses, performance characterization and specification, device selection, and roadmap direction.
- Serve as the avionics subject matter expert for satellite, reentry vehicle, and payload hardware, supporting the GNC, pharmaceutical, mission operations, and integration teams.
- Collaborate with flight software, thermal, GNC, and structures teams to assess vehicle-wide impacts of design decisions.
- Own product acceptance and qualification testing for space environments, including thermal, vibration, shock, TVAC, and EMI testing, with support from the Avionics Test team.
- Provide direction on system-level integration test plans to verify hardware performance at the vehicle level.
- Perform root cause analysis on test failures and implement holistic flight-risk mitigation strategies.
- Mentor junior engineers on projects, challenges, and design methodologies.
Benefits
- Long-term incentives in the form of stock options and/or long-term cash awards.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
