Senior Electrical Engineer — Confidential Defense Tech Startup

Aionia; Long Beach, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 220,000; Full time

Job summary

Odin Dynamics, based in Long Beach, CA, is seeking a Senior Electrical Engineer to own the electrical subsystems for autonomous underwater vehicles. You will design custom PCBA boards, replace off-the-shelf designs with in-house solutions, and drive the hardware from schematic to production.

Applicants should have 5+ years in electrical engineering, with expertise in high-speed digital, motor control, or power electronics. This is a hands-on, on-site role in a fast-moving defense startup.

Qualifications

• 4–7 years of experience in electrical engineering with PCBAs and production
• Background in automotive/EV, aerospace, robotics, or defense preferred
• BS or higher in Electrical Engineering or closely related field
• Expert-level PCB design tool proficiency; able to demonstrate complex multilayer board design
• Fully ownership mindset from design through production and handoff
• Experience with high-speed digital signals (PCIe, DDR), motor control, or power electronics

Responsibilities

• Design custom PCBA boards in Altium Designer from architecture to production
• Bring up new boards from scratch and debug signal integrity and timing issues
• Collaborate with embedded software engineers for hardware/software integration
• Make fast trade-offs to meet aggressive timelines while optimizing power and undersea constraints
• Support field testing and sea trials from prototype to deployment

Skills

PCB design

High-speed digital

Signal integrity

Hardware bring-up

Lab debugging

Education

BS in Electrical Engineering

Tools

Altium Designer

Oscilloscopes

Job description

Senior Electrical Engineer Design the board. Ship it in the water.

Odin Dynamics · Long Beach, Los Angeles, CA

Long Beach, Los Angeles, CA Full-time · On-site 5 days/week $140,000 – $220,000 + Equity Seed Stage · ~7 employees

About the Company

Odin Dynamics is a defense technology company pioneering the future of autonomous undersea warfare. Founded in 2024, the company is developing attritable unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) — cheap, easy to manufacture, and purpose-built for one-way missions that eliminate threats like naval mines at scale.

Unlike larger defense contractors or even mid-tier defense startups, Odin Dynamics builds vehicles that are an order of magnitude cheaper than competitors like Anduril or Saronic. The company already holds multimillion-dollar contracts with the U.S. Navy and is actively expanding into multi-domain autonomous systems.

"Odin Dynamics carries a SpaceX-inspired culture with a strong Responsible Engineer model. Every engineer — from intern to senior — owns their system end-to-end: requirements, design, implementation, testing, field deployment, and production."

The Opportunity

We are looking for a Senior Electrical Engineer with 5+ years of experience to serve as a Responsible Engineer for critical electrical subsystems on our autonomous underwater vehicles. You\'ll join a fast-moving defense startup building attritable UUVs for the U.S. Navy, taking full ownership of designing custom PCBAs from scratch and bringing them all the way through to production.

We need someone with deep expertise in at least one of three areas: high-speed digital electronics (custom Nvidia Jetson carrier boards), motor-control/drive electronics, or battery/power electronics and power distribution. This is a ground-up build — we\'re replacing off-the-shelf hardware with fully in-house designs and need someone who can sprint to an 80% solution and get hardware in the water within three months.

What You\'ll Do

• Design custom PCBA boards in Altium Designer (or equivalent) and own the full lifecycle from architecture through schematic capture, layout, prototyping, debug, and production
• Bring up new boards from scratch — debugging signal integrity issues, timing problems, and manufacturing defects using high-speed oscilloscopes and lab equipment
• Work closely with embedded software engineers as the hardware counterpart, ensuring tight hardware/software integration on your subsystem
• Make rapid engineering trade-offs to deliver sufficient-quality hardware on aggressive timelines, with designs optimized for power efficiency and underwater environmental constraints (conformal coating, power constraints)
• Support field testing and sea trials, taking full end-to-end responsibility for your subsystem\'s performance from prototype through deployment

Requirements

Required

• 4–7 years of experience in electrical engineering, designing PCBAs with Altium Designer through to production
• Background in automotive/EV, aerospace, robotics, or defense — ideally from fast-paced hardware companies
• BS or higher in Electrical Engineering or closely related field
• Expert-level PCB design tool proficiency (Altium Designer strongly preferred); must demonstrate complex multilayer board design capability
• Self-starting: can take a problem statement and independently drive to an 80% solution in weeks, not months
• Personally architected and taken a PCB from design through production — must have owned the full lifecycle: schematic, layout, bring-up, debug, and manufacturing handoff
• Deep expertise in at least one of: high-speed digital (PCIe, DDR, signal integrity), motor control (BLDC, GaN, MOSFETs), or power/BMS (DC-DC converters, battery management)
• U.S. citizen or green card holder (ITAR); U.S. citizen preferred for security clearance eligibility

Nice to Have

• Startup or small-team experience where they owned entire subsystems independently
• Proficient with oscilloscopes and lab debug tools for signal integrity analysis and board bring-up troubleshooting

Traits to Avoid

• Team contributors who haven\'t individually owned a full board design — they claim experience but only worked on a subcomponent within a large team
• Slow-paced big-company engineers who need formal processes and handoffs to execute
• Candidates who only have legacy/outdated electronics experience (e.g., older defense systems) rather than cutting-edge designs

Altium Designer Nvidia Jetson PCIe DDR STM32 ARM Cortex MOSFET Design GaN DC-DC Converters High-Speed Oscilloscopes Conformal Coating Signal Integrity Analysis

Interview Process

1

Hiring Manager Screen (30 min)

Initial screening call with Aron Pye, Head of Autonomy and Software, to assess technical depth in PCB design, relevant specialization, and overall fit. Evaluates what the candidate has specifically owned and delivered end-to-end.

2

On-site Interview (3 hours)

On-site interview at the Long Beach office with the broader engineering team. Evaluates deep technical expertise, hands-on lab skills, ability to collaborate across disciplines, and cultural fit with the fast-paced, Responsible Engineer model.