Lead Space Power Systems Engineer — Electric Propulsion

Karman+ is building the first logistics chain in space for the regolith age. Today everything we use in orbit — fuel, water, materials — is launched from Earth, which keeps every mission slow, expensive and small. Asteroids already hold those resources in orbit. We build the spacecraft and systems to go get them.

Our first mission launches in 2028 to rendezvous with the asteroid Apophis — a deep-space mission designed, built and tested by our team in Broomfield, Colorado, on a startup timeline and budget. We develop most of our own hardware, from power and propulsion electronics to RF systems and payloads, and we test it in our own facilities.

The role

You will own the spacecraft’s electrical backbone: an ~8 kW solar array feeding a high-voltage bus that drives electric propulsion, a low-voltage bus that runs everything else, and the power conditioning, battery management and distribution hardware in between. Most of it is designed here. You’ll be responsible for making it work as a system — from the array’s peak-power tracking through the HV bus to the PPU, down through the HV-to-LV conversion to the 28 V loads.

Day to day you will

• Own the power architecture and budget end to end: array, peak-power tracking, HV bus, battery and charge/discharge regulation, HV–LV conversion, and distribution — and keep the budgets closed as the spacecraft evolves.
• Design the array-to-bus interface: MPPT strategy, string configuration, and the behaviour of an unregulated HV bus feeding a 5 kW electric-propulsion load as the array degrades through the Van Allen belts and the vehicle flies power-limited.
• Set and defend the bus specification against the loads: PPU input range, inrush and ripple at thruster ignition, bus stability at the PCDU–PPU interface, and the cold-eclipse-exit overvoltage case that sets the HV design point.
• Lead the PCDU and power electronics development with the avionics team across board-level design, power switching and protection, telemetry, and the fault-protection behaviour that lets the vehicle recover on its own at 150 million kilometres.
• Build the power flatsat with an array simulator and a propulsion load simulator, and carry the subsystem through integration, EMC and environmental qualification in our own facilities.

You'll fit if you have

• Delivered a spacecraft power subsystem, or a major part of one, through test — including hands-on power-electronics design, not only architecture.
• Strong fundamentals in DC power conversion, control-loop and bus-stability analysis, battery systems and solar-array electrical behaviour across temperature and radiation.
• Experience with high-voltage spacecraft buses or high-power EP interfaces; GEO electric orbit-raising background is directly relevant.
• Working knowledge of radiation effects and derating practice for power parts.
• The habit of owning the whole thing: requirements, design, suppliers, test and documentation.
• Comfort with a small team where you’ll make the calls.d hand to a committee.

Nice to have

• MPPT/direct-drive array architecture
• PCDU/EPS board design for flight
• EMC test experience
• Familiarity with F Prime or similar flight software frameworks for telemetry and fault protection

Required

• US work authorization

Salary Range: $150k-200k annually

Benefits:

• Medical plans
• Dental & Vision plans
• Life insurance
• Short-term and Long-term Disability Insurance
• 401(k) Retirement Plan
• Equity Incentive Plan