Senior Payload Hardware / Primary Board Design Engineer

TrustPoint; Virginia (MN); On-site; USD 139,000 - 172,000; Full time

Job summary

TrustPoint seeks a Senior Electrical Design Engineer to own payload electronics design for space-grade satellites and lead a hardware team toward scalable, flight-ready solutions.

You will design the primary payload board, coordinate with RF and layout partners, and drive manufacturability from schematic through production, shaping next-generation architectures.

Qualifications

• 10+ years designing complex mixed-signal and RF-adjacent boards for space/high-reliability hardware.
• Ownership of multi-board PCBs from schematic to test and production.
• Design for manufacturability and test at production volumes.

Responsibilities

• Own board-level design and bring-up of the payload's primary board, including schematics and first-power-on debug.
• Direct the layout, assembly, and test with partners and payload test team.
• Ensure integrated multi-board payload performs correctly with RF lead coordination.
• Design the timing and frequency-reference chain with low-noise partitioning to meet timing stability.
• Sustain and revise payload hardware and define next-generation architecture.
• Produce manufacturable, testable designs fitting production cadence.
• Support anomaly investigation and design iteration.

Skills

Board-level design

Signal integrity

Power integrity

Mixed-signal design

RF-adjacent circuitry

FPGA/SoC awareness

Manufacturability for production

Technical leadership

Clear communication

Self-directed work

U.S. Person

Education

B.S. Electrical Engineering

M.S. preferred

Tools

FPGA tooling (Xilinx)

PCB layout software

High-reliability hardware tooling

Job description

Join TrustPoint and Build the World’s First Commercial GPS System in Space

GPS is a ubiquitous global utility in modern society; knowing one’s location is critical for government, commercial, and personal applications. Still, today’s solutions for determining location are inaccurate, slow, unencrypted, and susceptible to jamming and spoofing. These shortcomings make GPS insufficient for tomorrow’s safety-critical and high-precision applications, a problem TrustPoint intends to solve.

TrustPoint is developing a fully commercial next-generation GPS service to provide significant performance, security and reliability improvements for GPS users. This includes better accuracy, quicker Time to First Fix, and anti-spoof and anti-jam capabilities. The improvements will support US Government position and timing service resiliency as well as enable next-generation commercial applications like drone delivery, self-driving cars, urban air mobility, and augmented reality. The $260B annual GNSS Hardware, Software and Data Services market is ripe for disruption and TrustPoint intends to lead that revolution with our commercial infrastructure and services.

The Position

With locations outside Washington DC and in Silicon Valley, TrustPoint is currently seeking a Senior Electrical Design Engineer who wants to do more than design a board. You'll own the design of the payload electronics our satellites depend on, solve the problems that come with turning ambitious space technology into flight-ready systems, and grow into a technical leader as the payload hardware team scales.

We'll Expect You To:

• Own board-level design and bring-up of the payload's primary board, covering schematics, architecture, part selection, and first-power-on debug.

• Direct the layout, assembly, and test executed by layout partners, assembly technicians, and the payload test team.

• Ensure the multi-board payload performs correctly as an integrated system, coordinating closely with the RF lead on the amplifier board.

• Design the payload's precision timing and frequency-reference signal chain, including the low-noise board partitioning needed to meet timing-stability requirements.

• Sustain and revise current payload hardware while defining the next-generation payload architecture.

• Produce manufacturable, testable designs that fit the per-unit acceptance flow and production cadence, not first articles alone.

• Support anomaly investigation and design iteration.

You'll Need to Have:

• B.S. in Electrical Engineering or a related field (M.S. preferred).

• 10+ years of electrical engineering experience designing complex mixed-signal and RF-adjacent circuit boards (clock/timing distribution, low-noise power, high-speed digital, analog/RF interfaces) for space, aerospace, or other high-reliability hardware, with strong attention to signal and power integrity.

• Demonstrated ownership of primary or otherwise complex PCBs from schematic and detailed design through fabrication, bring-up, and functional test, with the ability to walk through prior designs and design decisions in a hands-on interview task.

• Experience owning integrated performance of a multi-board electronic system, beyond individual board designs.
• Primarily an electrical engineer, with a working understanding of the FPGA/firmware and software that run on the boards you design.
• Experience designing for manufacturability and test at production volumes.
• Readiness to grow into technical leadership of the payload hardware team, including near-term oversight of a junior engineer.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Self-directed and comfortable working autonomously in a fast-paced startup environment.
• Must be a U.S. Person.

We'd Like to See:

• Experience with GNSS, precision timing, or oscillator and clock-distribution hardware.
• Familiarity with SoC/FPGA-based payloads (e.g., Zynq) and the board-level support they require.
• Hands-on PCB layout experience, enough to define layout constraints, review routing critically, and work effectively with external layout, fabrication, and assembly partners.
• Prior experience mentoring engineers or leading a hardware team.
• Experience supporting multiple hardware generations in parallel while maintaining design and configuration discipline.

Cultural Fit

• Thrive in a start-up environment
• Effective communication style that instills a culture of optimism and positivity
• Sense of humor and ability to proactively problem solve.
• Encourages colleagues to think and plan strategically while executing well tactically.
• Works well with all company levels and disciplines (i.e. Legal, HR, etc.).
• Willing to “roll up sleeves” in a new venture, working closely with colleagues.

Compensation and Benefits

The selected candidate will be competitively compensated with salary, equity (stock options), and standard benefits. The salary range for this position is $139,000 to $172,000.

TrustPoint, Inc. is an Equal Opportunity Employer that does not discriminate on the basis of actual or perceived race, creed, color, religion, alienage or national origin, ancestry, citizenship status, age, disability or handicap, sex, marital status, veteran status, sexual orientation, arrest record or any other characteristic