About this job

The Electrical Engineer will participate in both flight spacecraft system development and research projects in collaboration with science and engineering staff.

This is a hands-on role that requires theoretical understanding and practical application of power electronics, high frequency switching systems, high voltage systems, circuit design, rapid prototyping, and related disciplines.

The ideal candidate has 4 plus years of high voltage (kV) design and development experience and an Electrical Engineering BS, MS, or PhD.  Prior experience with space applications preferred.

Responsibilities

• Specify, architect, design, and develop innovative analog and mixed-signal electronic systems, especially high voltage DC power electronics systems.
• Design high power (1kW+) multi-kV power supplies with focus on safety, reliability, high efficiency, and robustness for a space environment
• Work closely with external magnetics vendors on transformer design
• Board bring up, testing, and debugging of power supply hardware
• Produce system level, sub-system level, and block level design including circuit architecture, circuit element selection, circuit and sub-system simulations.
• Develop and use mixed-signal behavioral models and behavioral simulation techniques and tools to verify sub-system and system functionality and performance.
• Contribute to package selection/evaluation and validation of board and packaging design.
• Create validation plans and scripts, and collect and assess validation results.
• Support cross-functional teams including digital design, product engineering, test engineering, and production engineering
• Create clear and thorough documentation of design and product development activities to ensure high quality designs and to support dissemination of important design information to cross-functional teams

Profile

Education & Work Experience

• Minimum: BS plus 4 years experience in high voltage DC power supply design,
• Preferred: BS, MS, or PhD in Electrical Engineering plus 8 years analog and power electronics design and verification experience

Desired Skills

• Experience in high voltage DC-DC power supply design for multi-kV systems.
• Intimate knowledge of major power supply topologies: buck, boost, flyback, full bridge boost, and other isolated schemes
• Understanding of performance tradeoffs between the different topologies and knowledge of control schemes (voltage mode, current mode, constant-on-time, etc).
• Experience with transformer design
• Experience with schematic capture and PCB design software (Altium, Cadence Allegro, etc)
• Experience preparing and leading major engineering design reviews throughout the development lifecycle with an outward facing role to the customer.
• Experience in various phases of the aerospace electronics component development cycle.
• Knowledge of front-end product development, including generating requirements, mechanical and thermal packaging, analog and digital design, and transition to production
• Working knowledge of electronic component qualification requirements, including EMI/EMC and survivability.
• Electrical circuit simulation (ORCAD, PSPICE, LTSPICE)
• Electrical circuit analysis
• High reliability electronics development
• Prior spacecraft electrical engineering experience, especially high voltage systems
• Working knowledge of electronics product acceptance test methodologies and special test equipment.
• Strong technical communication skills and prior experience working with multi-disciplinary teams
• Good written and verbal communication skills.
• Experience adapting and modifying ground based COTS system for space qualification is a big plus

Key features of the job include

• High level of empowerment and autonomy to build, test and fly hardware in under a year from concept to flight based on proprietary technology·
• Stock options in a highly valued venture funded startup
• Membership in a dynamic team of gifted and intellectually diverse professionals
• Excellent benefits and bonus structures

Salary and option compensation is commensurate with experience and training and competitive with Series A level Silicon Valley space startups but with exceptionally good benefits. This is a full time position in Santa Clara California.

This position requires access to export-controlled commodities, technical data, technology, software, and services. U.S. citizenship, U.S. legal permanent resident status, protected person status under 8 U.S.C. § 1324b(a)(3), or U.S. Government export authorization is required.