Board Design Engineer

GCS Recruitment; Bastrop (TX); On-site; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

GCS Recruitment seeks a Hardware Design Engineer or PCB Engineer in Bastrop, TX to own board development and lab validation for high-density multi-layer PCBs used in satellite communications.

Lead board bring-up, verification, and debugging; contribute to schematic capture and PCB layout; collaborate with design teams to improve future hardware. 8+ years of experience required.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of board-level electrical design experience.
• Experience with high-speed digital testing and lab measurements.
• Experience with PCIe, Ethernet, DDR, JESD204 and signal integrity.
• End-to-end product lifecycle from design to production support.
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Electrical Engineering, or equivalent.

Responsibilities

• Lead bring-up of newly fabricated boards and perform power-on testing.
• Plan and execute design verification and validation with high-speed testing.
• Collaborate with design engineers to implement improvements in revisions.
• Contribute to schematic capture and PCB layout for next-generation hardware designs.
• Support downstream teams by delivering validated hardware and assisting debugging.

Skills

Board-level electrical design

Lab testing / debugging

High-speed digital interfaces

Power integrity

Signal integrity

Education

Bachelor's or Master's degree in Electrical Engineering

Tools

Oscilloscopes

Logic analyzers

Protocol analyzers

High-speed test equipment

Job description

Hardware Design Engineer or PCB Engineer

The Role

The team designs advanced phased-array antenna electronics for satellite communication systems, utilizing large, high-density multilayer PCBs with thousands of components, custom silicon devices, and high-speed digital interfaces operating at multi-gigabit data rates. Boards are being fabricated at a pace that exceeds the design team's validation capacity, creating an opportunity for experienced hardware engineers to own board development and laboratory validation activities.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead bring-up of newly fabricated boards, including power-on testing, subsystem checkout, debugging, and root-cause analysis.
• Plan and execute design verification and validation activities, including high-speed digital testing, power characterization, and functional verification, while documenting results to engineering standards.
• Collaborate closely with design engineers to identify issues and implement improvements in future board revisions.
• Contribute to schematic capture and PCB layout activities for next-generation hardware designs.
• Support downstream integration and testing teams by delivering validated hardware and assisting with measurement and debug activities.

What We're Looking For

• 8+ years of board-level electrical design experience, including schematic capture, complex multilayer PCB design, power distribution, and sequencing.
• Strong hands-on laboratory skills with expertise in board bring-up, debugging, validation, and use of oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, protocol analyzers, and high-speed test equipment.
• Experience with high-speed digital interfaces and multi-gigabit serial communications (e.g., PCIe, Ethernet, DDR, JESD204) along with signal integrity and power integrity considerations.
• Full product lifecycle experience from design and manufacturing through bring-up, validation, and production support.
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Electrical Engineering, or equivalent industry experience.

Nice to Have

• Experience in satellite, aerospace, or other high-reliability electronic systems.
• Exposure to phased-array, RF, or radar hardware.
• Experience working with custom ASICs, SoCs, FPGAs, and embedded hardware platforms.
• Familiarity with Python-based test automation and laboratory scripting.