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Salary: USD 181,913 - 262,763 / annual
Varda Space Industries is accelerating commercial space infrastructure development, from in-orbit pharmaceutical processing to reliable reentry capsules. The company designs, builds, and operates W-Series vehicles in-house, including satellite buses, pharmaceutical processing payloads, heat shields, and capsules.
As Principal Avionics Hardware Development Engineer, you will architect and design flight-critical electrical hardware for Varda's satellite bus, reentry vehicle, and customer payloads. Examples include flight computers, satellite power systems, and sensors for navigation and pharmaceutical manufacturing monitoring. You will define subsystem requirements based on high-level mission and company objectives, design to those requirements, and ensure manufactured systems meet specifications. Beyond design and build, you will define safe operating criteria and support the mission operations team on risk tradeoffs when operating near system bounds.
Key responsibilities include:
- PCB-level electronics design across all lifecycle stages: schematic capture, layout, design validation, fabrication/assembly, and manufacturing test
- Distilling high-level company and mission objectives into requirements, designs, and developmental milestones for subsystems
- Serving as avionics subject matter expert for satellite, reentry vehicle, and payload hardware, providing support to GNC, pharmaceutical, mission operations, and integration teams
- Cross-functional collaboration with flight software, thermal, GNC, and structures teams to determine system-wide impacts of design decisions
- Ownership of product acceptance and qualification testing for space environments (Thermal, Vibe, Shock, TVAC, EMI) with support from the Avionics Test team
- Providing direction on system-level integration test plans to verify hardware performance at vehicle level
- Root cause analysis on test failures and implementation of holistic mitigation strategies for flight risks
- Mentoring junior engineers on projects, challenges, and design methodologies
Varda emphasizes rigorous testing and failure investigation, stressing components above expected flight levels.
**Requirements:**
- B.S. in Electrical or Computer Engineering or related engineering discipline
- 8+ years of direct experience designing electronics hardware (schematic capture, PCB layout, board bring-up, environmental qualification across multiple hardware domains)
- Demonstrated experience contributing to complex electronics systems from design to launch (space or otherwise)
- Demonstrable knowledge of signal integrity, power, and grounding board layout principles
- Strong hands-on lab experience with oscilloscopes, function generators, benchtop digital multimeters, and power supplies
- Experience programming in Python, MATLAB, or another scripting/data analysis language
- Demonstrated experience implementing hardware layer of on-board and over-harness communication protocols (SPI, RS422, 1000BASE-T)
- Experience designing analog/digital filtering and mixed-signal circuits
- Power electronics design experience including load switches and switch-mode DC:DC converters
**Preferred Skills:**
- Industry-leading electronic circuit design and analysis skills
- Strong supporting knowledge in physics, math, and chemistry fundamentals for designing electronics for unique environments
- Understanding of aerospace sensor and actuator technologies (RTDs, pressure transducers, brushless motors, solenoid valves, thermocouples, stepper motors, rotary/linear encoders)
**ITAR Requirement:** Must be a U.S. person (U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident, or protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3)) due to access to export-controlled technology.
