Lead Space Compute Validation Engineer

Socket.dev; San Carlos (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity in Cowboy Space Corp.

Medical, dental, and vision insurance

401(k) retirement savings plan

Paid time off

10 paid holidays per year

Paid parental leave

Relocation assistance if applicable

Daily lunch in the office

Job summary

Cowboy Space Corp. in the United States is seeking a hands-on engineer to own validation across electrical, firmware, thermal, mechanical, and system software teams for launch and post-deployment milestones.

You will lead board bring-up, develop validation methodologies, and debug hardware-software interactions to ensure robust, flight-ready compute hardware. Strong ownership and cross-functional collaboration are essential.

Qualifications

• Experience in board design review and system validation.
• 5+ years designing and building compute hardware systems.
• Strong background in server/embedded compute platforms.
• Deep understanding of motherboard architecture and high-speed signaling.
• Hands-on debugging with test equipment.
• Experience with scripting in Python, C/C++.
• Strong ownership and cross-functional collaboration.

Responsibilities

• Lead board bring-up and system validation for advanced edge compute platforms.
• Develop validation methodologies covering signal integrity, power integrity, power sequencing, thermal behavior, and system reliability.
• Debug complex hardware and firmware interactions across high-speed interconnects (PCIe, Nvidia NVLink, AMD XGMI), memory subsystems, BMC/SMC and HMC architectures.
• Perform detailed board analysis using oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, protocol analyzers, and power instrumentation.
• Drive root-cause analysis for system failures discovered during validation and environmental testing.
• Design and validate interfaces using protocols such as I2C, SPI, and UART.
• Partner closely with mechanical, thermal, firmware, and software teams to ensure robust system integration.
• Help define engineering standards and validation processes for flight-ready compute hardware.

Skills

Board design review

System validation

Compute hardware engineering

High-speed signaling

Python/C scripting

Oscilloscopes

Logic analyzers

Protocol analyzers

Power instrumentation

Ownership mindset

Tools

Oscilloscopes

Logic analyzers

Protocol analyzers

Power instrumentation

Python

C/C++

Job description

Cowboy Space Corp. in the United States is seeking a hands-on engineer to own validation across electrical, firmware, thermal, mechanical, and system software teams for launch and post-deployment milestones.

You will lead board bring-up, develop validation methodologies, and debug hardware-software interactions to ensure robust, flight-ready compute hardware. Strong ownership and cross-functional collaboration are essential.