Senior Avionics Hardware Engineer for Spacecraft & Reentry

Varda Space Industries; Hawthorne (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 203,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Stock options

Long-term cash awards

Job summary

Varda Space Industries in California seeks a Senior Avionics Hardware Development Engineer to design and deliver flight-critical electrical hardware for our satellite bus and reentry vehicle. You will own the hardware domain from schematic capture through flight qualification and set subsystem requirements aligned with mission goals.

Work with cross-functional teams, perform device selection, validation, and system-level integration tests, and mentor junior engineers.

Qualifications

• B.S. in Electrical or Computer Engineering or related engineering discipline.
• 5+ years designing electronics hardware for aerospace/high-reliability industries.
• Experience contributing to complex electronics systems from design to production/deployment.
• Advanced PCB design expertise, high speed signal integrity, power/grounding, EMC.
• Experience taking complex PCB designs through fabrication/assembly.
• Expert user of Altium and/or KiCad.
• Hands-on lab experience with test equipment (oscilloscopes, generators, DMMs, power supplies).
• Experience programming in Python, MATLAB, or another scripting language.
• Experience implementing hardware layers of onboard/harness protocols such as SPI, RS-422, 1000BASE-T.
• Experience designing analog/digital filtering and mixed-signal circuits.
• Power electronics design including load switches and switching DC-DC converters.

Responsibilities

• PCB level electronics design across lifecycle stages from schematic to testing.
• Support avionics architecture trade studies, analyses, performance characterization and specification.
• Avionics SME for satellite, reentry vehicle, and payload hardware; assist cross-functional teams.
• Collaborate with flight software, thermal, GNC, and structures for cross-vehicle impacts.
• Own product acceptance and qualification testing for space environments with Avionics Test support.
• Create system-level integration test plans for vehicle-level verification.
• Perform root cause analysis on test failures and implement mitigation strategies.
• Mentor junior engineers on projects and design methodologies.

Skills

PCB design

High-speed signaling

Power/grounding

EMC

Analogue/digital filtering

Python

MATLAB

System integration

Root cause analysis

Mentoring

Education

B.S. in Electrical/Computer Engineering

Tools

Altium

KiCad

Oscilloscopes

Function generators

DMMs

Power supplies

Job description

Varda Space Industries in California seeks a Senior Avionics Hardware Development Engineer to design and deliver flight-critical electrical hardware for our satellite bus and reentry vehicle. You will own the hardware domain from schematic capture through flight qualification and set subsystem requirements aligned with mission goals.

Work with cross-functional teams, perform device selection, validation, and system-level integration tests, and mentor junior engineers.