Senior Electrical Engineer, Space
$126,000–$167,000 year
On-siteBoulder, Colorado, United States
Job Summary
Own the electrical architecture for space-bound imaging payloads, defining power, sensor, and interface electronics while driving tradeoffs between COTS and rad-hard components to enable sub-12-month paths to orbit. Lead the design, layout, bring-up, and qualification of PCBAs spanning analog, digital, mixed-signal, and power systems, translating performance models into electrical requirements and pushing back on non-critical items. Drive rapid design-build-test cycles by prototyping quickly, characterizing on the bench, and iterating on real hardware to converge on flight-ready designs. Design for the space environment by owning analysis and testing for radiation, thermal extremes, vacuum, vibration, and launch loads, ensuring compliance with TVAC, vibe, and EMI/EMC standards. Bake design for manufacturability and assembly into schematics from day one to support low-rate production scaling. Mentor junior engineers, serve as a technical anchor for design reviews, and document architectures and test results to support flight readiness and program reviews.
Required Qualifications
- 8+ years of experience in electrical engineering spanning system-level architecture, electronics design, and hands-on test, with a track record of owning designs end to end.
- A degree in Electrical Engineering or equivalent.
- Demonstrated ownership of electronics architecture for a complex electromechanical or sensor system, including the tradeoff decisions that shaped it.
- Strong analog, digital, mixed-signal, and power electronics design experience, with deep schematic capture and PCB layout proficiency.
- Proven ability to take hardware from architecture through bring-up, integration, and qualification — including hands-on debug in the lab.
- Experience delivering hardware on aggressive timelines and working in rapid, iterative design cycles.
- Excellent engineering judgment, problem-solving, and the ability to make sound decisions with incomplete information under schedule pressure.
- Ability to collaborate effectively across a multidisciplinary engineering team.
- Eligible to obtain and maintain an active U.S. Secret security clearance.
Desired Qualifications
- Direct experience designing electronics for space, especially New Space / commercial-cadence programs that flew hardware in a year or less.
- Familiarity with the space environment and qualification: radiation effects (TID/SEE), rad-hard and rad-tolerant part selection, COTS-for-space approaches, TVAC, vibration, and EMI/EMC.
- Experience with EO/IR, RF, optical, or other sensor and communication systems.
- Experience designing for manufacturability and assembly, and transitioning proven designs toward low-rate production to make them more robust and lower cost.
- Familiarity with analytical tools and programming languages such as MATLAB, Python, or C++.
- Understanding of system integration processes and workflows in aerospace or defense environments.
- Experience mentoring engineers and leading design reviews.
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