Spacecraft Power Electronics Engineer Verified today

What You'll Do

• Contribute to design, iteration, and qualification of Katalyst's spacecraft Electrical Power System (EPS), including power conversion, power distribution, battery interface electronics, solar array interfaces, protection circuitry, and subsystem power interfaces.
• Design, modify, and review schematics, PCB layouts, interface definitions, and analysis packages for spacecraft power electronics, with emphasis on switch-mode power supplies, DC/DC converters, load switching, current sensing, fault protection, and EMI-aware layout practices.
• Support integrated operation of EPS hardware during functional, performance, and qualification testing, working directly with test engineers to execute bench, thermal vacuum, vibration, and other qualification test campaigns.
• Help own integrated functional testing of EPS hardware with avionics, flight software, mechanisms, payloads, and other spacecraft subsystems, ensuring power interfaces behave correctly across nominal, off-nominal, and fault cases.
• Plan and execute targeted stress, margin, and performance testing, exercising hardware across design extremes such as input voltage range, load transients, thermal limits, startup sequencing, fault response, and converter stability.
• Help define design changes and architecture improvements for future spacecraft power systems, including EPS feature upgrades, power budget impacts, redundancy considerations, telemetry needs, and mission-specific power requirements.

Your Background

• Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering or equivalent field.
• 3-5 years of experience designing, testing, or integrating power electronics, spacecraft EPS hardware, battery/solar power interfaces, or closely related high-reliability power systems.
• Strong understanding of switch-mode power supply design, DC/DC converter architectures, compensation/stability, magnetics selection, protection circuitry, and practical power electronics debugging.
• Experience designing or modifying schematics and PCB layouts for power electronics, including high-current routing, grounding, thermal considerations, creepage/clearance, current sensing, and EMI/EMC-aware layout practices.
• Proficiency in Altium or a similar ECAD tool for schematic capture, PCB layout review, design release, and documentation.
• Exposure to spacecraft or embedded-system power architectures, including power distribution, load switching, battery management interfaces, solar array regulation, or power telemetry.
• Exposure to common digital communication standards (SPI, I2C, UART, CAN, Ethernet) and mixed-signal design best practices for telemetry, control, and power-system interfaces.
• Hands-on experience with hardware bring-up, bench testing, and debugging using oscilloscopes, electronic loads, power supplies, DMMs, logic analyzers, and related lab equipment.
• Experience writing or executing test procedures, documenting results, and driving board- or component-level troubleshooting through root cause and corrective action.
• Experience integrating power electronics with other spacecraft or embedded subsystems. Exposure to environmental testing such as thermal vacuum or vibration is a plus.

Requirements

Must be willing to work extended hours and weekends as needed.

This position requires access to ITAR-controlled information. Non-US persons must be authorized access to ITAR information before commencement of employment.

Compensation

Base salary range: $105,000-$145,000 annually. Individual compensation determined based on relevant experience, education, job-related knowledge and skills, and responsibilities of the role.

Benefits include: comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage; employee stock options and long-term equity incentives; 401(k) retirement plan; unlimited paid time off; paid parental leave; relocation assistance when applicable; eligibility for discretionary bonuses; and catered team lunch every Wednesday.