Senior Drone Hardware Architect

Telemetry Today LLC; Sunnyvale (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

Applied Intuition, Inc. seeks a senior Hardware Systems Lead to own the end-to-end hardware architecture for drone platforms. You will prototype, build, integrate, and test hardware on real aircraft, focusing on survivability under vibration, shock, and environmental extremes.

Candidate must have 10+ years in hardware engineering for drones or aircraft, with hands-on lab and flight test experience, and strong_SENSOR integration and SWaP optimization skills for lightweight, reliable systems.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of hands-on hardware engineering experience on drones or aircraft.
• Experience with vibration, ingress protection, thermal management, and EMI/EMC.
• Lab and field experience: building prototypes, wiring, and flight tests.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end hardware architecture for drone platforms.
• Prototype, build, integrate, debug, and test hardware on real aircraft.
• Define survivability against vibration, shock, moisture, and temperature extremes.
• Lead integration of sensors, compute, power systems, communications, and flight controllers onto airframes.
• Own SWaP tradeoffs to balance performance, flight time, payload capacity and cost.
• Plan and run environmental, durability, and flight testing; analyze failures and drive design fixes.
• Be the technical authority for hardware tradeoffs across mechanical, electrical, avionics, software, autonomy, and flight test.

Skills

Hands-on hardware

Drone hardware

SWaP optimization

Sensors integration

Vibration testing

Flight testing

Reliability testing

Education

BS/MS in Aerospace, Mechanical, Electrical, Mechatronics

Tools

DO-160 standards

MIL-STD-810

MIL-STD-461

Job description

Applied Intuition, Inc. seeks a senior Hardware Systems Lead to own the end-to-end hardware architecture for drone platforms. You will prototype, build, integrate, and test hardware on real aircraft, focusing on survivability under vibration, shock, and environmental extremes.

Candidate must have 10+ years in hardware engineering for drones or aircraft, with hands-on lab and flight test experience, and strong_SENSOR integration and SWaP optimization skills for lightweight, reliable systems.