Contract Electrical Design Engineer

Contract Electrical Design Engineer — Space Power Electronics

Open hourly rate

6-month contract, with the option to convert to permanent

On-site in Littleton, CO

I’m working with a space and defence business that’s building out its power electronics team in Colorado. They design the power conversion and distribution hardware that goes on their spacecraft, and they need a hands-on circuit designer to come in and own boards from schematic right through to bring-up.

The best way to describe it is real analog power work. If you’ve designed switching power supplies from discrete parts and you’re happy to stand behind your analysis in a design review, this one’s worth a conversation. The contract is a test drive, and in most cases they look to convert people after six months.

What you’ll be doing

• Designing DC/DC converters, switching regulators and power switching circuits, with some GaN FET designs in there too
• Isolated and non-isolated SMPS, plus filtering and power conditioning
• Running your own worst-case, stability and thermal analysis rather than handing it off
• Capturing schematics in OrCAD and working closely with the layout engineers on PCB reviews
• Picking parts that hold up in space, so thinking about derating, radiation and reliability
• Getting hands-on with bring-up and validation testing, then supporting integration into the wider power and avionics systems
• Putting together the design packages that go in front of internal teams and customers

✅ What you’ll need

• Degree in Electrical Engineering
• Around 5+ years designing circuits in an ECAD tool. 8 is the sweet spot, but if you’re a bit under and the experience lines up, still reach out.
• Strong analog power electronics, specifically SMPS built from discrete components
• Filtering, op-amps, comparators, load switches and high-side FET drives
• SPICE simulation such as PSpice or LTspice
• Some exposure to FPGA or microcontroller interfaces. They’re not after an FPGA engineer, just someone comfortable around embedded hardware.
• Space is ideal. Defence, medical or automotive works too, as long as you’ve worked to regulated standards like AS9100.
• US citizen, able to get a security clearance and happy to work on defence programmes
• On-site in Littleton, with the odd trip to Albuquerque, Jacksonville and California
• No relocation is covered, so you’d need to sort your own short-term accommodation if you’re not local.

⭐ Nice to have

• Power board design for space EPS products
• GaN FETs, which is genuinely rare and will stand out
• EMI/EMC, grounding and shielding at satellite level
• Taking a design through the full lifecycle, from concept to flight
• Open to converting to a permanent role after the contract

Interested?

Click apply with an updated copy of your resume. I’ll come back to you within 48 hours. If you don’t hear back within 48 hours, please assume you haven’t been successful on this occasion.