Senior Avionics Hardware Development Engineer Verified today

About Varda

Varda is developing commercial space infrastructure for in-orbit pharmaceutical processing and reentry capsules. The W-Series vehicles, including satellite buses, reentry vehicles, pharmaceutical payloads, and C-PICA heat shields, are designed, built, and operated in-house. Varda is headquartered in El Segundo, California, with offices in Washington, DC and Huntsville, AL.

The Role

You will design and deliver flight-critical electrical hardware for our satellite bus, reentry vehicle, and customer payloads. You own your hardware domain from schematic capture through flight qualification. You will define subsystem requirements based on high-level mission and company objectives, design to those requirements, and ensure the system as manufactured meets those requirements. You will define safe operating criteria and support our mission operations team on risk tradeoffs of operating near the bounds of those criteria.

Responsibilities

• PCB level electronics design at all lifecycle stages: schematic capture, layout, design validation, fabrication, assembly, and manufacturing test.
• Distill high-level company or mission objectives into requirements, designs, and developmental milestones for your subsystems.
• Serve as avionics subject matter expert for satellite, reentry vehicle, and payload hardware. Provide support to GNC, pharmaceutical, mission operations, and integration teams.
• Actively collaborate with cross-functional teams such as flight software, thermal, GNC, and structures to determine system impacts of design decisions.
• Own product acceptance and qualification testing for space environments (Thermal, Vibe, Shock, TVAC, and EMI) with support from the Avionics Test team.
• Provide direction on system-level integration test plans to verify hardware performs as expected at the vehicle level.
• Perform root cause analysis on test failures and implement holistic mitigation strategies for flight risks.
• Mentor junior engineers on projects, challenges, and design methodologies.

Basic Qualifications

• B.S. in Electrical or Computer Engineering or related engineering discipline.
• 5+ years of direct experience in electronics hardware development.
• Demonstrated experience designing and delivering flight-critical electrical hardware (schematic capture through environmental qualification) on programs where hardware physically flew or was qualified for flight.
• Demonstrable knowledge of signal integrity, power and grounding board layout principles.
• Strong hands-on lab experience with oscilloscopes, function generators, benchtop digital multimeters, and power supplies.
• Experience programming in Python, MATLAB, or another scripting/data analysis language.
• Demonstrated experience implementing the hardware layer of on-board and over-harness communication protocols such as SPI, RS422, and 1000BASE-T.
• Experience designing analog/digital filtering and mixed-signal circuits.
• Power electronics design experience including load switches and switch mode DC:DC converters.

Preferred Skills and Experience

• Industry leading electronic circuit design and analysis skills.
• Strong supporting general knowledge in physics, math, and chemistry fundamentals for designing electronics that experience unique environments.
• Understanding of aerospace sensor and actuator technologies including RTDs, pressure transducers, brushless motors, solenoid valves, thermocouples, stepper motors, and rotary/linear encoders.

Compensation and Employment Terms

Salary range: $140,333 to $202,703 per year. Leveling and base salary is determined by job-related skills, education level, experience level, and job performance. You will be eligible for long-term incentives in the form of stock options and/or long-term cash awards. This role is on-site in El Segundo, CA.

US Person Requirement

Varda employees are provided access to export-controlled items. Varda only hires US persons permitted to access this technology without an export license. US person means: U.S. citizen, U.S. lawful permanent resident, or individual admitted to the U.S. as a refugee or granted asylum.