Senior Staff Engineer - Electrical

Vector Atomic•Pleasanton, CA

8d•Onsite

About The Position

As a key contributor at Vector Atomic, an IonQ company, the Senior Staff Engineer - Electrical develops electronic solutions for quantum instruments and oversees circuit development from concept through implementation. The role requires an agile engineer who can work in a fast-paced environment, move between complex design challenges and immediate troubleshooting, and maintain high quality standards. This position is based onsite at the Pleasanton, California office and involves up to 10% domestic or international travel. The engineer collaborates across disciplines, owns complex PCBA development, supports integration, testing, and manufacturing, and maintains design documentation in a cloud-based PLM system. U.S. export-control eligibility is required.

Requirements

Ph.D. or Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering or a related field with 12+ years of professional experience, or equivalent practical experience.
8+ years of professional electrical design experience developing complex mixed-signal PCBA designs using professional ECAD tools.
Experience with Altium Designer is strongly preferred.
Comfort working in a laboratory environment, testing and debugging hardware with standard electronic instrumentation.
Design high-density PCBs with fine-pitch BGAs, high-speed differential pairs, and mixed-signal architectures using modern ECAD tools.
Expert understanding of system-level design considerations for programmable devices such as SoCs, FPGAs, and MCUs.
Design precision electronics with tight noise and ripple specifications, balancing size, weight, power, cost, and performance requirements.
Define and implement controlled-impedance structures, signal-integrity strategies, power-distribution networks, grounding schemes, and EMI/EMC-aware layout practices.
Use a PLM system to manage PCBA designs, including creating and managing ECOs.
Strong written and verbal communication skills and ability to collaborate effectively across engineering teams.
Meet U.S. export-control eligibility requirements: be a U.S. citizen, lawful U.S. permanent resident, or qualifying refugee or asylee.

Nice To Haves

Expertise with Altium Designer for schematic capture, PCB layout, library management, and generating outputs.
Experience designing and implementing RF circuits on traditional PCBs or ceramic substrates.
Experience integrating electronics with high-precision photonic components such as lasers, AOMs, and photodetectors.
Knowledge of thermal analysis and PCB thermal design, including heatsinking, copper pours, thermal vias, and component derating.
Experience defining, simulating, and verifying ASIC designs.
Professional experience in the precision sensor sector, including atomic clocks or INS instrumentation.

Responsibilities

Collaborate with physicists and electrical, mechanical, software, and optical engineers to translate system and schematic requirements into electronic designs for quantum instruments.
Own end-to-end development of complex PCBs, including requirements gathering, schematic and layout design, fabrication coordination, and performance verification.
Assist with system integration and testing to ensure instrument specifications are met.
Improve PCB designs, development processes, and engineering procedures.
Support manufacturing by troubleshooting customer-reported issues, developing test verification and assembly procedures, and ensuring boards meet yield, quality, and testability targets.
Assist with electronic board bring-up and debugging, document PCB rework, and track issues.
Use electronic test and measurement equipment to characterize and verify board performance.
Maintain accurate design documentation, revisions, and Engineering Change Orders (ECOs) in a cloud-based PLM system.