Chief Electrical Engineer – Spacecraft Systems

Firefly Aerospace; Cedar Park (TX); On-site; USD 180,000 - 250,000; Full time

Job summary

Firefly Aerospace, headquartered in north Austin, Texas, seeks an Electrical Engineering Chief Engineer to lead the design, development, integration, and verification of spaceborne electrical and avionics systems. You will be the technical authority for spacecraft electrical architectures across multiple programs and guide teams to deliver flight-ready hardware.

You will drive new product development, prototyping, and provide oversight to ensure design maturity, compliance with space standards,

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Electrical, Computer, Aerospace, or closely related field.
• 15+ years in electrical/avionics engineering for aerospace systems with leadership responsibility.
• Experience as technical authority on flight hardware programs, owning architecture through development and flight.
• Strong depth in spacecraft/launch vehicle power, data handling, buses, harnessing.
• Proven experience with EEE parts selection, radiation effects, and space environmental qualification.
• Track record leading multi-disciplinary teams and balancing performance with cost/schedule.
• Experience taking designs from concept to flight qualification, including PCB and firmware.
• Excellent written and verbal communication with leadership and external customers.
• Ability to work in a fast-paced environment across engineering disciplines.
• Master’s or PhD preferred; modular avionics architectures and reuse experience.
• Hands-on board-level design, FPGA/ASIC, harness analysis.
• Experience supporting on-orbit operations and post-flight analysis.
• Familiarity with configuration and requirements management in flight hardware.

Responsibilities

• Own the electrical/avionics baseline and architectural direction across hardware, firmware, harnessing, and vehicle systems.
• Define spacecraft and launch vehicle electrical architectures: power, data handling, interfaces, harnessing.
• Establish design standards, processes, and best practices for electrical engineering.
• Manage system and subsystem electrical requirements with traceability, verification, and validation.
• Lead design reviews (SRR, PDR, CDR, TRR, FRR) and risk assessments; approve maturity.
• Drive modular architecture to maximize reuse across vehicles.
• Provide direction to teams; review artifacts, analyses, schematics, ICDs, power budgets, test plans.
• Lead trade studies to optimize power architectures, redundancy, radiation tolerance, and derating.
• Ensure compliance with environmental requirements and EEE parts selection/derating.
• Define integration and test strategies including functional testing, hardware-in-the-loop, environmental tests.
• Support failure analysis, anomaly resolution, and root-cause actions.
• Collaborate with Systems, Mechanical, Software, RF, and Mission Assurance teams.
• Support roadmaps, IRAD direction, and proposals; mentor engineers.
• Pursue continuous process/tool/DFM/DFT improvements.

Skills

Leadership

Systems engineering

Power systems

Avionics data handling

Requirements management

Technical communication

Flight hardware

Security clearance readiness

Education

Bachelor's degree in Electrical/ aerospace engineering

Master’s degree preferred

Ph.D. preferred

Tools

SpaceWire

CAN

MIL-STD-1553

Ethernet

ECSS

Job description

Firefly Aerospace, headquartered in north Austin, Texas, seeks an Electrical Engineering Chief Engineer to lead the design, development, integration, and verification of spaceborne electrical and avionics systems. You will be the technical authority for spacecraft electrical architectures across multiple programs and guide teams to deliver flight-ready hardware.

You will drive new product development, prototyping, and provide oversight to ensure design maturity, compliance with space standards,