Director, Electrical Engineering

Role Summary

We are seeking an experienced Director of Electrical Engineering to lead and scale our electrical engineering department. This role will play a critical leadership position in advancing our product line of observatory systems and laser communication systems, driving both architectural vision and execution across complex, high-performance hardware.

Responsibilities

• Lead the end-to-end development of electrical systems from early concept and prototyping through production and field deployment.
• Define and own the electrical architecture across observatory platforms, including PCBs, harnessing, and subsystem integration.
• Establish best practices in circuit design, signal integrity, EMI/EMC compliance, and power distribution at a system level.
• Provide technical oversight on schematic design, simulation, layout, and validation to ensure performance, reliability, and manufacturability.
• Drive rigorous testing methodologies and validation plans to ensure system performance and safety requirements are met.
• Define and document electrical interfaces, system architectures, and product requirements to enable efficient cross-team execution.
• Collaborate with manufacturing partners to ensure smooth transitions from prototype to scaled production.
• Champion design for manufacturing (DFM), design for test (DFT), and design for reliability (DFR) across all programs.
• Partner closely with mechanical, software, optical, and manufacturing teams to ensure seamless system integration.
• Identify and mitigate risks related to high-speed interfaces, vibration environments, thermal performance, and long-term field reliability.
• Support supplier selection, manufacturing processes, and quality control standards.
• Build, mentor, and lead a high-performing team of electrical engineers across varying levels of experience.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering or a related field.
• 8+ years of experience in a relevant electrical engineering role.
• Strong understanding of DC power circuits, motor drivers, common interfaces/protocols (I2C, SPI, CAN, Ethernet, MIPI, PCIe), ADCs, microcontrollers, opamps, and transistor circuits.
• Excellent circuit debugging skills, knowledge of power supplies, oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, spectrum analyzers, multimeters.
• Comfortable with PCB rework including soldering, staking, cutting traces, preparing wires.
• Experience with circuit simulation and design tools.
• Understanding of circuit board construction, transmission line structures, signal integrity, EMI/EMC, via types, and component types.
• Understanding of wire harnessing fundamentals such as electrical checkout, hi-pot testing, impedance characterization, and shielding.
• An acute product sense and place an emphasis on design for manufacturing and field reliability.
• An iterative mindset- perfect is the enemy of good.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Altium (or similar PCB software) and LTSpice (or similar software).
• Familiarity with high rate interconnect - backplane technologies like VPX with capabilities > 100GB/s.
• Experience with electromagnetics simulation software (ADS, HFSS).
• Experience with high-reliability validation testing campaigns.
• Experience with high speed SerDes interface design and testing.
• Experience mitigating mechanical failure points for PCBs in vibration environments.
• A love of astronomy, physics, and science.