Senior Electrical Design Engineer (Herndon)

Our client is building a Low Earth Orbit Navigation System. It is a foundational infrastructure system built to deliver GPS-independent time transfer and orbit tracking. They are seeking a Senior Electrical Design Engineer.

Here, you wouldn't be maintaining legacy systems, you would own the architecture, schematic design, and bring-up of their core satellite payload electronics. A couple of the incredibly cool projects you’d get to sink your teeth into include:

• Designing the LEONS Infrastructure: You'll work directly on the Low Earth Orbit Navigation System (LEONS), developing the hardware that enables GPS-independent time transfer and orbit tracking.
• Mastering Precision Timing Chains: You will architect ultra-low-noise, high-speed board designs integrating advanced atomic clocks (like OCXOs/TCXOs), ensuring timing stability down to the nanosecond.
• Moving at Startup Velocity: You’ll see your hardware go from a schematic in Altium to bent metal and functional flight payload operating in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) on an incredibly aggressive timeline.

They are pulling together an elite team of engineers to solve some of the hardest mixed-signal and RF-adjacent challenges in the NewSpace industry.

Requirements:

• B.S. in Electrical Engineering or a related field (M.S. preferred).
• 10+ years of electrical engineering experience designing complex mixed-signal and RF-adjacent circuit boards (clock/timing distribution, low-noise power, high-speed digital, analog/RF interfaces) for space, aerospace, or other high-reliability hardware, with strong attention to signal and power integrity.
• Demonstrated ownership of primary or otherwise complex PCBs from schematic and detailed design through fabrication, bring-up, and functional test, with the ability to walk through prior designs and design decisions in a hands-on interview task.
• Experience owning integrated performance of a multi-board electronic system, beyond individual board designs.
• Primarily an electrical engineer, with a working understanding of the FPGA/firmware and software that run on the boards you design.
• Experience designing for manufacturability and test at production volumes.
• Readiness to grow into technical leadership of the payload hardware team, including near-term oversight of a junior engineer.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Self-directed and comfortable working autonomously in a fast-paced startup environment.
• Must be a U.S. Person.

Desired:

• Experience with GNSS, precision timing, or oscillator and clock-distribution hardware.
• Familiarity with SoC/FPGA-based payloads (e.g., Zynq) and the board-level support they require.
• Hands-on PCB layout experience, enough to define layout constraints, review routing critically, and work effectively with external layout, fabrication, and assembly partners.
• Prior experience mentoring engineers or leading a hardware team.
• Experience supporting multiple hardware generations in parallel while maintaining design and configuration discipline.