Hardware Qualification Intern

PAVE Space SA; Villeneuve (VD); Remote; CHF 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

PAVE Space SA is seeking a hands-on electronics engineer to build qualification hardware for space-grade components. You will design PCBs from concept to fabrication, define measurement setups, and run tests to generate data that guides flight electronics design.

You will contribute to radiation-focused qualification work (SEE and TID), and translate results into actionable conclusions and recommendations for component choices. This is an on-site role in Villeneuve (VD), Switzerland.

Qualifications

• Strong electronics background with practical PCB design experience.

Responsibilities

• Translate qualification questions into PCBs, test plans, measurements and conclusions.
• Design mixed-signal qualification PCBs from concept to fabrication.
• Decide measurement setups, instrumentation, data capture and DUT connections.
• Execute tests, debug, and iterate when results are unclear.
• Support radiation-focused qualification including SEE and TID tests.
• Turn measurements into engineering outputs: plots, limits and recommendations.

Skills

Electronics fundamentals

PCB design

Mixed-signal knowledge

Lab instrumentation

KiCad/Altium

Python/embedded

English communication

Education

Electrical/Electronics engineering degree or equivalent hands-on

Tools

KiCad

Altium

Oscilloscope

Multimeter

Job description

When an engineer asks “how does this component behave under radiation, temperature, or voltage stress?”, you’ll be the person turning that question into hardware, measurements, and usable data.

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

So, why now?

We are qualifying real electronics for real flight hardware, and the answers cannot stay in datasheets. We need dedicated test boards, clear measurement setups, and component-level data that can guide design decisions in days and weeks.

You’ll take open-ended qualification questions and turn them into PCBs, test plans, measurements, and conclusions engineers can actually use.

You will own

• Define how to test a component or circuit when the initial question is still broad, for example “characterize this circuit over temperature” or “evaluate how this IC behaves under radiation”
• Design mixed-signal qualification PCBs from concept to fabrication, including schematic, layout, component selection, and bring-up
• Decide the measurement setup: test modes, number of samples, instrumentation, sensors, data capture, and how the DUTs are connected
• Execute tests on the boards you designed, including debugging, lab measurements, and iteration when the first setup does not answer the question cleanly
• Support radiation-focused qualification work, including SEE and TID test preparation, with occasional temperature, voltage, and operating‑corner characterization
• Turn measurements into engineering outputs: plots, conclusions, limits, and recommendations that influence component and circuit choices

What we are looking for

• A strong electronics background, whether through an electrical/electronics degree or equivalent hands‑on experience
• Real PCB design experience beyond simple starter boards; ideally you have already designed several boards involving microcontrollers, sensors, analog front ends, or mixed‑signal circuitry
• Solid mixed‑signal fundamentals: analog front ends, sensor interfaces, ADCs, references, power rails, grounding, noise, and MCU interfaces
• Confidence using lab instruments such as oscilloscopes, multimeters, bench supplies, and the judgement to know when a measurement setup is lying to you
• Ability to work in KiCad or Altium; we use KiCad, but equivalent PCB tool experience is fine
• Enough Python and embedded programming ability to support test execution, logging, automation, or simple data analysis
• Fluent English; French is helpful internally, but not required
• Nice to have: experience with temperature or voltage characterization, automated data acquisition, measurement uncertainty, Python data analysis and plotting, environmental test setups, or any exposure to radiation effects such as SEE or TID.

You will fit if

• You like being handed a real engineering question, not a step‑by‑step lab procedure.
• You can move from “what do we need to know?” to “what board and setup will prove it?” without waiting for every detail to be defined for you.
• You care about measurement quality as much as PCB layout, because a clean board with unclear data does not help anyone.
• You want ownership, but you are also comfortable asking for help when the physics, the setup, or the result does not make sense yet.
• The position is fully on-site in Villeneuve (VD), because this is hands‑on hardware work and we strongly believe in on‑site presence for faster interactions. This is early, hard, and sometimes ambiguous: you may start with a sentence like “we need to understand how this circuit behaves” and have to turn it into a test campaign. Radiation effects can be learned here, but PCB design cannot start from zero.

What makes that worth it: you will build the hardware that tells us which components and circuits we can trust. Your boards will not be side projects; they will produce data that changes design decisions on flight electronics.

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