Senior Manager, Digital & Mixed-Signal Hardware

Airbus Ventures; Westminster (CO); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

CesiumAstro is seeking a Senior Engineering Manager for Digital & Mixed-Signal Hardware to lead a growing team responsible for high‑performance electronics including software‑defined radios and phased‑array control systems.

You will guide architecture, reviews, mentoring, and process development while ensuring on‑time delivery and technical excellence across sites in Austin/Westminster/El Segundo. This is a hands‑off design leadership role with deep technical engagement.

Qualifications

• Experience leading digital and mixed-signal hardware teams.
• Strong architecture, design reviews, and mentorship skills.
• Ability to drive production-readiness and process improvements.

Responsibilities

• Maintain technical integrity and engineering excellence across products.
• Establish scalable digital hardware development processes and standards.
• Provide architecture reviews and risk mitigation with SMEs across disciplines.
• Occasionally contribute to board-level digital/mixed-signal work as needed.
• Lead complex debug efforts on high-speed interfaces and FPGA implementations.
• Ensure designs are buildable/testable at scale with DFM/DFT practices.
• Drive handoffs to manufacturing with supply chain and test teams.
• Ensure aerospace-grade reliability, quality, and scalability.
• Collaborate with Supply Chain for component availability and cost awareness.
• Promote design reuse and platform commonality across products.

Skills

Leadership

Digital hardware

Mixed-signal design

Architecture reviews

Mentorship

Job description

Please Note:To conform with the United States Government Space Technology Export Regulations, the applicant must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., conditional resident, asylee or refugee (protected individuals as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3)), or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.

At CesiumAstro, we are developers and pioneers of out-of-the-box communication systems for satellites, UAVs, launch vehicles, and other space and airborne platforms. We take pride in our dynamic and cross-functional work environment, which allows us to learn, develop, and engage across our organization. If you are looking for hands‑on, interactive, and autonomous work, CesiumAstro is the place for you. We are actively seeking passionate, collaborative, energetic, and forward-thinking individuals to join our team.

CesiumAstro is seeking a Senior Engineering Manager, Digital & Mixed-Signal Hardware to lead a growing team developing high-performance electronics for our communications systems, including software‑defined radios, space‑computing platforms, and phased‑array control systems. You will be accountable for the technical quality and on‑time delivery of your team’s hardware, from architecture and design through production.

This is a deeply technical management role, but not an individual-contributor design role. You will stay close to the engineering through technical guidance, design and architecture reviews, mentorship, and critical debug, while building a team that consistently produces excellent work. You will also help establish the standards, tools, processes, and reusable engineering approaches that allow CesiumAstro’s hardware teams to execute rigorously and efficiently across sites.

WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE

• Your team delivers high-quality, manufacturable hardware to our product lines predictably and on schedule. Accountability does not stop when prototypes work.
• Designs transition successfully into repeatable production at the required scale, with technical and manufacturing risks identified and addressed early.
• Engineering quality improves as the organization grows. You stay close enough to the technical details to identify weaknesses, mentor engineers through them, and turn lessons learned into better standards, tools, reviews, and processes.
• Teams benefit from shared engineering practices and technical knowledge across CesiumAstro. Engineers reuse proven components, designs, and approaches where appropriate, while common processes and standards enable rigorous engineering without unnecessary bureaucracy.
• You build a stronger engineering organization, not just successful individual programs. Engineers grow in technical judgment and responsibility, strong technical and people leaders emerge, and the organization develops the capability and leadership structure needed to scale.
• The initial team will include approximately 8-12 direct reports, primarily in Austin and Westminster, with a smaller presence in El Segundo. As CesiumAstro grows, people management is expected to become increasingly site-focused while this role continues to provide technical and process leadership across the company.

JOB DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Maintain technical integrity and engineering excellence for board‑level digital and mixed‑signal electronics development across the company.
• Establish, mature, and scale engineer-friendly digital hardware development processes, including high-speed interface design guidelines, signal integrity simulation workflows, and schematic and layout standards for dense, high-layer-count PCBs.
• Provide detailed technical review and mentorship through architecture and design reviews, identifying design risks and errors early, helping engineers develop stronger engineering judgment, and ensuring appropriate subject matter expert (SME) engagement across digital, RF, power, firmware, and mechanical disciplines.
• Occasionally contribute directly to board‑level digital and mixed‑signal designs, particularly to close temporary gaps in high-risk or schedule-critical programs.
• Lead or support complex debug efforts involving high-speed interfaces, large FPGA and processor implementations, and related technical topics.
• Ensure digital hardware designs are buildable and testable at scale using DFM and DFT best practices.
• Drive disciplined handoff from engineering to manufacturing through close collaboration with manufacturing engineering, supply chain, and production test engineering.
• Ensure designs meet quality, reliability, and scalability requirements for aerospace and defense production environments.
• Partner with Supply Chain to ensure component availability, lifecycle risk mitigation, and cost awareness.
• Drive design reuse, modular architectures, and platform commonality across products to accelerate execution and reduce risk.

TEAM LEADERSHIP, STAFFING & PERFORMANCE RESPONSIBILITIES

• Build, scale, and lead a high-performing digital and mixed‑signal hardware engineering team that delivers reliably to multidisciplinary product teams.
• Lead, coach, and develop an initial team of approximately 8-12 engineers distributed primarily across Austin and Westminster, with a smaller presence in El Segundo.
• Partner with product and program leadership to plan work, allocate resources, surface technical risk early, and hold the team accountable to realistic delivery commitments.
• Own staffing and team development, including hiring, performance management, career development, coaching, and succession planning