Avionics Hardware Engineer

PAVE Space SA; Villeneuve (VD); Remote; CHF 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

PAVE Space SA is building LYOBA, a heavy kick stage moving up to 4-tonne payloads from LEO to high-energy orbits in under 24 hours. This role targets qualifying the flight computer board for flight and leading avionics hardware for what comes next, spanning flight computers, propulsion electronics, interfaces, and more.

You will own PCB design through qualification, design redundancy schemes, select components across digital/mixed-signal/power, support fabrication, debugging, and perform

Qualifications

• MSc in Electrical Engineering or equivalent experience.
• Strong PCB design experience in Altium, KiCad, or Cadence.
• Background in high-reliability electronics (aerospace/defence/nuclear/medical/automotive).
• Deep understanding of digital logic, signal integrity, and mixed-signal noise and power management.
• Full cycle experience from requirements to PCB design, hardware debugging, and firmware/software integration.
• Fluent English in the working environment.

Responsibilities

• Flight computer PCB design: current revision through qualification and beyond.
• Redundancy architecture: design, simulation, and test of fault-tolerant schemes.
• Component selection across digital, mixed-signal, and power domains.
• Fabrication support, board assembly, and hands-on debugging.
• Verification and validation through qualification, functional, and environmental testing.
• Radiation resiliency characterization of flight electronics (SEE, TID).

Skills

PCB design

Digital logic

Signal integrity

Power management

Hardware debugging

Embedded systems

Altium

KiCad

Cadence

English

Education

MSc in Electrical Engineering

Tools

Altium

KiCad

Cadence

Job description

PAVE Space is building LYOBA, a heavy kick stage moving up to 4-tonne payloads from LEO to high-energy orbits in under 24 hours.

The current revision of the flight computer exists in hardware. A light revision is due by Q2 2027 to support an IOD mission flying in 2028, but that's the starting line, not the finish. The real weight of this role is in qualifying that board for flight and then leading the avionics hardware for what comes next. Your scope spans the full range of what flies: flight computers, propulsion electronics, interfaces, and more.

You will own

Flight computer PCB design: current revision through qualification and beyond

Redundancy architecture: design, simulation, and test of fault-tolerant schemes

Component selection across digital, mixed-signal, and power domains

Fabrication support, board assembly, and hands-on debugging

Verification and validation through qualification, functional, and environmental testing

Radiation resiliency characterisation of flight electronics (SEE, TID)

What we are looking for

MSc in Electrical Engineering, or the equivalent earned in practice

Strong PCB design experience in Altium, KiCad, or Cadence

Background in high-reliability electronics (aerospace, defence, nuclear, medical, or automotive)

Deep understanding of digital logic, signal integrity, and mixed-signal noise and power management

You've taken an embedded system through the full cycle: requirement definition, PCB design, hardware debugging, firmware/software integration

Fluent English (our working language)

Nice to have: high-speed interface design (DDR, PCIe, Ethernet, USB), power integrity analysis, radiation effects knowledge and hands-on experience with rad-tolerant components, dual/triple modular redundancy, familiarity with ECSS-Q-ST or equivalent standards.

You will fit if

You're comfortable making component and architecture trade-offs when the requirements are still forming and the datasheets don't tell you everything.

You'd rather prototype it, assemble it, debug it, and qualify it yourself than hand it off between stages.

You step outside your core discipline when the timeline needs it.

You want to lead the hardware, not just contribute to it.

This role is fully on-site in Villeneuve (VD), because the boards don't debug themselves remotely. The work is early and hard, some requirements are still forming, qualification is ahead of you not behind you, and the timeline to flight doesn't have slack built in. What makes that worth it: you lead every board that flies on the most ambitious space programme in Switzerland. Flight computer, propulsion electronics, all of it — your hardware becomes the nervous system of a spacecraft that actually launches.

We are building to ship, grounded on real hardware, real funding, real milestones.