Senior Principal Electrical Engineer

3M HEALTHCARE; Hawthorne (CA); On-site; USD 190,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health benefits

401k match

Relocation assistance

Annual bonuses

Free daily lunch

No meeting Fridays

Unlimited PTO

Casual dress code

Job summary

CHAOS Industries seeks a Sr. Principal Electrical Engineer to lead high‑speed digital hardware design for aerospace and military applications. You will guide architecture, detailed design, verification, and field sustainment as a technical authority.

This on‑site Hawthorne, CA role requires deep expertise in boards with FPGAs, processors, and high‑speed interfaces. The ideal candidate has 15+ years of experience, strong leadership, and the ability to obtain U.S. security clearance.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering required.
• 15+ years of relevant engineering experience.
• Strong leadership of complex high-speed digital hardware.
• Experience with FPGA, processors, memory, data converters, and high-speed interfaces.
• Experience setting PCB layout strategy and design review criteria for high-speed digital electronics.
• Hands-on experience leading board bring-up, system integration, and failure analysis.

Responsibilities

• Act as technical authority for high‑speed digital circuit design, SI, and PI.
• Lead PCBAs with FPGAs, processors, memory, data converters, and clocks.
• Define design approaches to meet performance, schedule, and reliability.
• Set standards for digital board design, layout constraints, and SI/PI analysis.
• Resolve cross‑disciplinary hardware issues across FPGA, RF, power, and mech.
• Mentor engineers and coordinate activities across multiple teams.
• Interface with customers, vendors, and program leadership on digital hardware topics.
• Oversee hardware integration, verification, and production transition.

Skills

High-speed digital hardware

FPGA

Signal integrity

Power integrity

PCB layout

System architecture

Leadership

Security clearance

Education

Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering

MS or PhD in Electrical Engineering or related

Tools

Altium Designer

HyperLynx

Sigrity

ADS

Ansys SIwave

Job description

CHAOS Industries is redefining modern defense with a multi-product portfolio that gives the ultimate advantage—domain dominance. The company's products are powered by Coherent Distributed Networks (CDN™), empowering warfighters, commercial air operators, and border protection teams to act faster, adapt rapidly, and stay ahead of evolving threats.

CHAOS Industries was founded in 2022 and has raised a total of $1 billion in funding from leading investors, including 8VC, Accel, and Valor Equity Partners. The company is headquartered in Los Angeles, with offices in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, and London. For more information, please visit www.chaosinc.com.

Role Overview

CHAOS is seeking a Sr. Principal Electrical Engineer with expertise in digital circuit design and signal integrity analysis to serve as a technical authority for high-reliability digital electronics used in aerospace and military applications. This role spans the full product lifecycle, from early architecture and requirements shaping through detailed design, analysis, verification, production support, and fielded system sustainment. The ideal candidate is a senior digital hardware technical authority with deep high-speed board design, signal integrity, and power integrity expertise; a track record of setting design direction across programs; and the ability to guide cross-disciplinary teams through ambiguous, high-consequence hardware challenges. This is a full-time, on-site position in Hawthorne, CA.

Responsibilities

• Act as a technical authority for high-speed digital circuit design, signal integrity, and power integrity across multiple programs or product lines
• Lead design and review of complex PCBAs involving FPGAs, processors, memory devices, data converters, clocks, high-speed serial interfaces, and mixed-signal boundaries
• Lead digital hardware architecture trades and define design approaches that satisfy system performance, schedule, manufacturability, reliability, and qualification requirements
• Set standards, procedures, and review practices for digital board design, stack-up definition, layout constraints, SI/PI analysis, bring-up, and verification
• Resolve complex cross-disciplinary technical issues involving digital hardware, FPGA/software interfaces, RF coexistence, power distribution, EMI/EMC, thermal behavior, and mechanical packaging
• Guide PCB layout strategy for controlled impedance, length matching, return paths, grounding, shielding, decoupling, power distribution networks, and isolation of sensitive circuits
• Serve as the senior technical interface with customers, vendors, suppliers, and internal program leadership for digital hardware topics
• Mentor engineers and coordinate technical activities across digital, FPGA, embedded software, RF, power, mechanical, manufacturing, and test teams
• Serve as technical authority for hardware integration, verification, qualification testing, production transition, failure analysis, and field support

Minimum Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering with 15+ years of relevant engineering experience
• Demonstrated technical leadership of complex high-speed digital hardware
• Strong understanding of digital design fundamentals, including timing, clocking, controlled impedance, signal integrity, power integrity, grounding, decoupling, and return-path management
• Extensive experience with digital board design involving FPGAs, processors, memory devices, high-speed data converters, and board-level communication interfaces
• Experience setting PCB layout strategy and design review criteria for high-speed digital, mixed-signal, and high-reliability electronics
• Hands‑on experience leading board bring‑up, system integration, troubleshooting, verification, qualification, production transition, and failure analysis activities
• Demonstrated ability to set technical direction and lead engineers through ambiguous, cross‑disciplinary hardware challenges
• Ability to obtain andmaintaina U.S. security clearance

Preferred Requirements

• Advanced Degree (MS or PhD) in Electrical Engineering, Systems Engineering, Physics, Mathematics or related discipline
• Experience with Avionics platforms
• Experience using Altium Designer
• Expertise with signal integrity and/or power integrity analysis tools such as HyperLynx, Sigrity, ADS, Ansys SIwave, or equivalent
• Experience with DDR, PCIe, Ethernet, JESD204, SERDES, LVDS, or similar high-speed interfaces in high-reliability systems
• Familiarity with EMI/EMC mitigation techniques and aerospace standards such as RTCA/DO‑160, MIL‑STD‑461, MIL‑STD‑810, and MIL‑STD‑1275
• Experience establishing design standards, analysis templates, qualification approaches, or review processes for engineering teams
• Experience designing for manufacturability and leading transition from prototype hardware to production

Benefits

• Health Benefits: Medical, dental, and vision benefits 100% paid for by the company
• Additional benefits: 401k (+ 50% company match up to 6% of pay), FSA, HSA, life insurance, and more
• Our Perks: Free daily lunch, ‘No meeting Fridays’, unlimited PTO, casual dress code
• Compensation Components: Competitive base salaries, generous pre‑IPO stock option grants, relocation assistance, and (coming soon!) annual bonuses
• Team Growth: 250 employees and counting across 5 global offices

$190k-260k

The stated compensation range reflects only the targeted base compensation range and excludes additional earnings such as bonus, equity, and benefits. If your compensation requirements fall outside of the range, we still encourage you to apply. The salary range for this role is an estimate based on a range of compensation factors, inclusive of base salary only. Actual salary offer may vary based on (but not limited to) work experience, education and/or training, critical skills, and/or business considerations.