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Salary: USD 100,800 - 126,000 / annual
Rocket Lab is an end-to-end space company building rockets, spacecraft, and critical subsystems for missions ranging from interplanetary exploration to national security and defense. The Space Systems team has enabled over 1,700 missions and works with partners including NASA, the Space Development Agency, and the U.S. Space Force.
The Harness Design Engineer II role is based at Rocket Lab's headquarters in Long Beach, CA. You will design electrical harnesses for spacecraft, including organizing interfaces, selecting components, specifying split locations and lengths, and generating design documentation for the spacecraft engineering team. You will also assist in electrical engineering activities for spacecraft and space systems components, including avionics design, circuit analysis, prototyping, and testing.
Key responsibilities include:
Harnessing:
- Perform or support harness layout, connector and back shell selection, wire selection, and shielding design for spacecraft
- Generate pinout tables for harness connectors based on spacecraft interconnect diagrams
- Create and maintain bills of materials (BOMs) for harnessing in the product lifecycle management (PLM) tool
- Assist in creating documentation for electrical system schematics and harness designs
Avionics:
- Develop test plans and procedures for avionics subsystems and components
- Perform analysis and evaluations to optimize spacecraft avionics circuits for performance, reliability, and manufacturability
- Participate in internal design and customer-facing review meetings as an avionics electrical engineering team representative
- Work in multi-disciplinary teams to assist in designing electronic assemblies for satellite and spacecraft programs
The role involves prolonged periods of sitting, standing, walking, and computer work, with occasional exposure to moderate levels of noise, dust, and fumes in production areas.
Qualifications:
- Bachelor's degree in aerospace, mechanical, electrical engineering, or other engineering discipline
- 2+ years of electrical engineering or avionics experience
- U.S. citizenship required due to program requirements (ITAR compliance)
Nice-to-have qualifications:
- Master's or PhD in aerospace, mechanical, electrical engineering, or related field
- Aerospace/defense industry experience
- Satellite development and operations support experience
- Understanding of space environment, orbital mechanics, and rigid body dynamics
- Experience with LT Spice, Altium, and/or Siemens software suite (Teamcenter)
- Experience with requirement management tools such as JAMA
- Testing experience with electrical subsystems, thermal vacuum, random vibration, and hardware-in-the-loop (HITL) testing
- Proficiency in electronics principles and electrical systems including power electronics, communication systems (RS-422, SPI, Ethernet, CAN bus), signal integrity, and grounding
- Proficiency with instrumentation, interfaces, and sensors including power supplies, oscilloscopes, serial devices, accelerometers, thermocouples, RTDs, and 4-20mA sensors
- Ability to work in dynamic environments with competing priorities
