System Electrical Engineer

Tacit•San Francisco, CA

14h

About The Position

Tacit is an early-stage deep-tech startup based in San Francisco, developing hardware that rethinks human-computer interaction. The company is backed by General Catalyst, Khosla Ventures, and Greylock Partners, and its founding team includes people from Stanford, BrainGate, Oculus, and Tesla. The System Electrical Engineer will validate, debug, and improve core electrical blocks for next-generation sensing hardware, working between design and validation. The role involves bringing up prototypes on the bench, measuring architectural block performance, root-causing issues, and feeding findings into subsequent schematic and layout revisions. Work spans prototype development through mass production, including bring-up, design updates, and test implementation. Design cycles aim to improve performance, reduce power, and reduce area. As products approach production, the role may grow to include support for builds with contract manufacturers.

Requirements

Bachelor's or Master's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field.
At least 3 years of experience in electrical engineering, hardware design, or hardware validation.
Strong fundamentals in analog and mixed-signal circuits, power conversion and regulation, signal integrity, power integrity, and grounding.
Hands-on debugging skills and a track record of root-causing hardware issues on real boards.
Hands-on experience with board bring-up and laboratory instruments such as oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, power supplies, electronic loads, and probes.
Experience with schematic capture and PCB design for multilayer boards using Altium Designer or an equivalent tool.
Working knowledge of high-speed interfaces such as USB, Quad-SPI, MIPI, or DDR, and low-speed buses such as I2C, SPI, and UART.
Experience with power and battery systems, including DC-DC converters, LDOs, PMICs, and Li-ion/Li-poly charging.
Ability to write clear validation plans and reports.
Comfort working in a fast-moving startup environment where engineers own substantial parts of the hardware.

Nice To Haves

Python or similar scripting experience for lab automation and instrument control, such as PyVISA or SCPI.
Embedded firmware experience in C/C++, sufficient to add test hooks and diagnostics.
Signal-integrity and power-integrity simulation experience using tools such as HyperLynx, Ansys SIwave, or Cadence Sigrity.
Familiarity with RF circuits and components.
Experience with wearable, body-worn, or battery-powered devices with tight power, size, and thermal constraints.
Experience with low-noise analog front ends, biopotential sensing, or other sensitive sensor interfaces.
Experience statistically analyzing test data across units and builds, including yield, limits, and outlier detection.
Production test exposure, including test fixtures, boundary scan/JTAG, ICT, or calibration flows.
Experience supporting EVT, DVT, or PVT builds with contract manufacturers.
Familiarity with EMI/EMC pre-compliance testing and reliability or environmental testing.

Responsibilities

Bring up prototype boards and establish stable, measurable operating conditions.
Write and execute validation plans for power rails, battery charging and power management, high-speed interfaces, sensor front ends, and mixed-signal paths.
Characterize electrical blocks across voltage, load, temperature, and operating modes, and compare results with design intent.
Debug analog, digital, and power domains using laboratory instruments, and root-cause issues including rail noise and ripple, signal-integrity problems, noise coupling into analog paths, unexpected resets, and excess power draw.
Distinguish genuine failures from measurement artifacts and support conclusions with data.
Translate validation findings into schematic and layout changes for subsequent prototype cycles.
Own schematic and PCB updates for validated blocks, collaborating with the senior hardware team on architecture and component choices.
Reduce power consumption, quiescent current, board area, and component count while preserving performance.
Build repeatable bench test setups and automate measurements where useful.
Use data across units and builds to set limits, identify outliers, and track yield.
Run reliability and stress testing and feed failure findings back into the design.
Help convert bench tests into production tests and support contract manufacturer builds as products move toward production.
Work with mechanical, firmware, and software engineers on bring-up, debugging, and design trade-offs.
Write validation reports and debug summaries to inform design decisions.