Staff Hardware Engineer (Secure Compute Systems)
$180,000–$230,000 year
HybridHouston, Texas, United States
Job Summary
Design and deliver hardware-based products for post-quantum cryptography and Orbital Compute systems, spanning terrestrial and orbital variants. Own power, thermal, and physical envelope design, including enclosure design, bus interfaces, and architecture for secure compute systems. Deliver the first hardware variant on a short time-to-market while designing in parallel for hardware at scale, ensuring manufacturability, reliability, and compliance with environmental constraints like radiation and thermal-vacuum conditions. Partner with software, security, and systems engineers to integrate cryptographic and compute hardware into end products, supporting design reviews and providing feedback. Contribute to FPGA-based design and integration where applicable. Operate in a fast-paced environment with significant ambiguity, delivering iteratively and quickly. Full-time role based in Houston, TX (bi-weekly onsite), requiring U.S. citizenship due to ITAR regulations. Salary range $180K – $230K.
Required Qualifications
- U.S. person
- Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or another related technical discipline, or equivalent professional experience
- 15 years of professional hardware or electrical engineering experience, taking compute or electronics hardware from concept to production
- Experience with power and thermal design and analysis for electronics hardware
- Experience with mechanical/physical envelope, packaging, and enclosure design
- Experience designing bus interfaces and bus architectures (e.g., PCIe, Ethernet, SpaceWire, or similar)
- Experience sourcing components and working with third-party vendors and contract manufacturers
- Demonstrated ability to deliver hardware under aggressive timelines while planning for manufacturability and scale
- Must be available for onsite in Houston every other week
- Track record of making things happen in ambiguous, fast-moving environments
- Uses good judgement to problem-solve proactively, positively impacting hard challenges
- Demonstrated organization skills to meet tight deadlines with high quality results
Desired Qualifications
- Prefer FPGA design experience (RTL, Verilog/VHDL)
- Prefer experience with space-qualified, rad-hard, or ruggedized hardware for harsh environments
- Prefer experience with hardware security or cryptographic hardware (HSMs, secure elements, or TPMs)
- Prefer familiarity with relevant hardware, safety, and quality standards
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