Senior PCB Design Engineer

About the role

Castelion is bringing a new approach to defense development and production: one that focuses on short, iterative design cycles, rapid testing in development, and modern commercial manufacturing strategies for production at scale. We're designing, building, and testing next generation long range strike weapons systems to give America and its Allies a definitive edge and deter future conflicts.

Responsibilities

• Own the end-to-end development of complex smart PCBs - from concept through production and test.
• Architect and design mixed-signal boards that include microcontrollers, high-speed digital interfaces (e.g., Ethernet, SPI, I2C, UART, DDR, etc.), network switches, and power management circuits.
• Select and integrate processors, FPGAs, memory, and network interfaces to create custom embedded compute platforms.
• Collaborate with firmware, software, and mechanical teams to ensure successful integration and functionality.
• Drive schematic capture, component selection, PCB layout, and DFM/DFT processes.
• Work with contract manufacturers and internal teams to manage board builds, bring-up, and validation.
• Define and execute bring-up and test plans, from bench to system-level.

Requirements

• Bachelors or Masters degree in Electrical Engineering or related field.
• 2+ years of experience in high-complexity PCB design and delivery.
• Proven track record of cradle-to-grave ownership of smart PCB systems (ideally with compute and networking functionality).
• Strong experience with embedded processors or microcontrollers (ARM, RISC-V, etc.).
• Strong experience with high-speed digital interfaces (Ethernet, USB, DDR, PCIe).
• Experience with network switch integration or routing devices.
• Knowledge of signal integrity and power integrity considerations.
• Proficient in Altium Designer, OrCAD, or similar EDA tools.
• Familiar with board-level EMC, grounding, shielding, and thermal design.
• Comfortable working in a fast-paced, hardware-first environment.
• ITAR Requirements: To conform to U.S. Government export regulations, applicant must be a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful, permanent resident (aka green card holder), (iii) Refugee under 8 U.S.C.1157, or (iv) Asylee under 8 U.S.C.1158, or be eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.

Skills

• Experience designing flight electronics or mission-critical systems (space, defense, aerospace, etc.).
• Exposure to embedded systems bring-up and debugging.
• Experience working with test labs, EMI/EMC qualification, or environmental testing.
• Familiarity with FPGA/SoC design workflows.
• Leadership Qualities: Bias to Action and Creative Problem Solving; Desire and experience questioning assumptions in ways that lead to break through ideas that are ultimately implemented; Successfully bring in applicable processes/concepts/materials from other industries to achieve efficiency gains; Ability to personally resolve minor issues in development without requiring significant support; High Commitment, High Initiative; A successful candidate will have a genuine passion for Castelion's mission and consistently look for ways to contribute to the company's technical goals and prevent hardware blockers; Ability to work in a fast paced, autonomously driven, and demanding atmosphere; Strong sense of accountability and integrity; Clear Communicator; Proactively communicates blockers; Trusted in previous roles to be voice of company with regulators, suppliers, gate keepers and customers; Capable of tactfully managing relationships with stakeholders to achieve company-desired outcomes without compromising relationships; Emails, IMs and verbal interactions are logical, drive clarity, and detailed enough to eliminate ambiguity.

Benefits

• All employees are granted long-term stock incentives as part of their employment at Castelion.
• All employees receive access to comprehensive medical, vision, and dental insurance.
• The company offers four weeks of paid time off per year.