Application Engineer

Nebula; El Segundo (CA); Hybrid; USD 100,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Health, dental, and vision insurance

401(k) with company matching

Bonus for near El Segundo location

On-site work only

Job summary

Nebula in El Segundo, CA is seeking electrical/RF engineers to own the design rules and the coupon block that every board uses. You will be the technical bridge between customer designs and our process, ensuring compliance from feasibility to delivery.

You will work on multi-layer stack-up, controlled impedance, full-wave simulations, and measurement-driven design. On-site in El Segundo with equity opportunities awaits a committed, hands-on engineer.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or higher in Electrical Engineering, RF or related field.
• Hands-on experience designing multi-layer PCBs with impedance control.
• RF/microwave passive design backed by full-wave simulation and measurement.
• Ability to translate measurements into design rules and communicate with customers.

Responsibilities

• Buildability reviews of board designs against process and stack-up.
• Redesign for embedded passives, 3D conductor geometry, and rigid/flex sections.
• Derive design rules from measurements (trace spacing, current, vias, creepage/clearance).
• Ensure signal and power integrity (controlled impedance, return paths, differential pairs).
• Design RF/microwave passives (patches, feeds, multilayer filters).
• Run full-wave and circuit simulations (unit-cells, S-parameters, correlation).
• Lead first article discussions and customer relationships, feeding feedback to materials.

Skills

Multi-layer PCB design

RF/microwave design

VNA & TDR measurement

Design rules from measurements

Customer communication

Education

Electrical Engineering or related

Tools

Gerber

KiCad

Altium

Job description

What to Expect

Your role is to take customers' board designs into build and to be the technical bridge between their engineers and ours, at the level where a requirement becomes a property a material has to hold.

The work is design review and redesign against what the process holds, signal and power integrity, RF and microwave passive design, and the coupon measurement that turns each of those into a rule.

You will own the design rules and the coupon block that rides every board, set the acceptance criteria first-article review runs against, and be the engineer the customer talks to from feasibility through delivery.

We are looking for electrical, RF or microwave engineers with experience and interest in multi-layer stack-up and controlled impedance, passive design backed by full-wave simulation, and measurement that others design against.

Every role works with our AI systems daily. What can be deterministic, must be. You need no AI background; we prefer people without one. We hire for your knowledge and experience in the field first, so you can steer the ship; the tooling is a learning curve we expect you to take on.

We work on-site in El Segundo. This is hard work, but you will be rewarded with equity in a company we believe will become one of the world's most valuable.

What You'll Do

• Buildability review of Gerber, KiCad and Altium designs against the process, stack-up and clearances
• Redesign for embedded passives, three-dimensional conductor geometry, shaped dielectric, and rigid and flex sections
• Design rules from measurement: trace and space, current capacity, via resistance, creepage and clearance
• Signal and power integrity: controlled impedance, return paths, differential pairs, crosstalk, conductor loss, decoupling
• RF and microwave passives: patch antennas, arrays and feeds, multilayer filters, transitions, frequency-selective surfaces
• Full-wave and circuit simulation: unit-cell sweeps, far-field patterns, S-parameter extraction, correlation against measurement
• Measurement: coupon design, four-wire resistance and LCR, vector network analyzer with TRL calibration, fixturing
• First article and customer relationship: acceptance criteria, feasibility conversations, requirements fed back to materials

What You'll Bring

• A degree in electrical, electronic, RF or microwave engineering, or applied physics, or equivalent experience
• Hands-on multi-layer board design in a commercial EDA tool, owning stack-up and controlled impedance through release
• RF or microwave passive design backed by full-wave simulation: antennas, filters, transmission lines, matching networks
• Fluent with vector network analyzer work, time-domain reflectometry, and the calibration and de-embedding behind them
• The judgment to take a structure that measures differently than it simulated back to its cause
• Ready to write design rules from your own measurements and to talk to customers directly
• Bonus: rigid-flex design, built-in passive elements, metamaterial structures, or aerospace and defense applications work

Expected Compensation

$100k to $250k base salary, plus equity

• Equity participation in a high-growth startup
• Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance
• 401(k) with company matching
• Bonus for living within 5 miles of our El Segundo facility
• On-site work with rare work-from-home exceptions
• Merit-based organization where contribution drives reward