Senior Electrical Engineer - Digital Hardware Verified today

Power the future of space at Star Catcher

Star Catcher is building the first energy grid in space to power the orbital economy. Today's spacecraft must generate all their own power, which limits their capabilities and operating lifetime. Star Catcher is developing technology to wirelessly beam energy to spacecraft's existing solar panels when and where they need it.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead and co-own digital-hardware architecture, detailed design, and development of FPGA/SoC-based boards, backplane interfaces, and compute module integration, from requirements analysis through schematic capture, simulation, manufacturing support, integration, and verification.
• Lead high-speed digital PCB design, including multi-Gbps interfaces (PCIe, SpaceWire, Ethernet), backplane bus architectures, memory and storage interfaces, clock generation and distribution, and data acquisition/control circuits.
• Perform detailed analysis of digital and mixed-signal circuits for timing and margin, signal integrity, power integrity, thermal performance, radiation effects, EMI/EMC, and component derating; use these analyses to drive design decisions and closure at board and system level.
• Perform worst-case circuit analysis across process, voltage, and temperature corners to validate design robustness for high-reliability space-flight hardware.
• Select and qualify radiation-tolerant digital hardware components, evaluating component tolerances and environmental impacts to ensure adequate design margin.
• Define hardware-software interfaces and lead board bring-up and debug strategy with embedded software and firmware engineers, using lab instrumentation to validate designs and troubleshoot issues at component, board, module, and system level.
• Support architecture trade studies and conceptual digital hardware solutions for compute and backplane systems as mission requirements evolve, including in support of new program pursuits.
• Support risk reduction and mitigation activities related to part obsolescence, cost, producibility, and long-lead materials.
• Mentor mid-level digital hardware engineers and lead technical design reviews as the team grows.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
• 10+ years of experience in digital hardware design, FPGA-based systems, or high-speed digital PCB design.
• Experience with backplane-based architectures (VPX, SpaceVPX, CompactPCI Serial, or similar).
• Experience with FPGA/SoC platforms and associated design toolchains.
• Strong working knowledge of high-speed digital design practices (signal integrity, power integrity, timing closure).
• Demonstrated experience performing timing analysis, SI/PI simulation, and worst-case analysis using industry-standard tools (HyperLynx, Ansys SIwave/HFSS, Cadence, or equivalent).
• Experience with hardware integration, verification, and debug in a lab environment.

Desired Skills

• Experience with radiation-tolerant digital design practices (TID and SEE mitigation).
• Experience selecting or qualifying compute modules for space-flight applications.
• Familiarity with spacecraft data bus standards (SpaceWire, CCSDS, or similar).
• Experience designing, integrating, or analyzing high-speed electrical interfaces and protocols (multi-Gb Ethernet, PCIe Gen 2/3/4/5).
• Experience with Altium Designer or equivalent EDA/ECAD tools (Cadence, Siemens Xpedition).
• MATLAB, Python, or similar programming experience for modeling, analysis, or test automation.
• Experience developing part derating and stress analysis reports for high-reliability digital hardware.
• Experience with NASA/DoD life cycle and technical reviews (SRR, PDR, CDR).
• Experience mentoring engineers or leading technical design reviews.

Star Catcher offers a competitive benefits package including comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage, 401(k) retirement plan, life insurance, and paid parental leave.