Senior Avionics Engineer: Lead Flight Electronics & RF

Approach Venture; Alameda (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, and vision insurance

401(k) with company match

Paid time off and sick leave

Equity participation

Professional development support

Structured onboarding and integration

Job summary

Approach Venture in Alameda, CA seeks a Senior Avionics Engineer to own the vehicle's avionics system from architecture to qualification. This hands-on role spans embedded electronics, flight computing, telemetry, power, and instrumentation, with cross-disciplinary collaboration across systems, software, and mechanical teams.

The candidate will design, develop, and qualify hardware for demanding aerospace environments, lead PCB design and board bring-up, and participate in environmental testing

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering or related field required.
• Strong embedded software development experience in C/C++, RTOS, or bare-metal firmware.
• Experience designing, debugging, and validating custom electronic hardware.

Responsibilities

• Own the overall avionics architecture, including flight computers, command and data handling systems, and onboard electronics.
• Design, develop, and qualify embedded electronic hardware for demanding aerospace environments.
• Develop embedded firmware using C/C++, RTOS, or bare-metal architectures.
• Design multilayer PCBs, perform schematic capture, support board bring-up, and validate new hardware.
• Lead development of onboard sensor systems, instrumentation, and data acquisition.
• Design and integrate telemetry, RF communications, antennas, and flight comms hardware.
• Develop vehicle power distribution architecture, battery integration, and power conditioning systems.
• Design and support flight safety electronics and qualification activities.
• Build and maintain HIL and SIL test environments.
• Plan environmental testing including vibration, thermal, and shock tests.
• Support vehicle testing and data collection; analyze results and implement improvements.
• Create and maintain engineering docs, interface definitions, schematics, and qualification records.
• Collaborate with systems, software, guidance, navigation, control, and mechanical teams.

Skills

Embedded software development

C/C++ programming

RTOS/bare-metal firmware

Hardware debugging

PCB design understanding

Education

Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering or related field

Master's degree (preferred)

Tools

Altium Designer

KiCad

Job description

Approach Venture in Alameda, CA seeks a Senior Avionics Engineer to own the vehicle's avionics system from architecture to qualification. This hands-on role spans embedded electronics, flight computing, telemetry, power, and instrumentation, with cross-disciplinary collaboration across systems, software, and mechanical teams.

The candidate will design, develop, and qualify hardware for demanding aerospace environments, lead PCB design and board bring-up, and participate in environmental testing