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Salary: USD 190,000 - 285,000 / annual
K2 Space is building the largest and highest-power satellites ever flown, backed by over $1 billion in total funding and $1 billion in signed contracts across commercial and US government customers. The company is mass-producing advanced satellite platforms for missions from LEO to deep space, with multiple launches planned for 2027 and scaling to 100 satellites per year.
This is a hands-on technical leadership role for a Principal Mixed-Signal Design Engineer focused on data converters. You will lead the architecture and development of wideband, high-performance ADCs (analog-to-digital converters) and DACs (digital-to-analog converters) and associated analog front-ends for advanced mixed-signal SoCs (system-on-chip) used in satellite communications and RF systems.
Key responsibilities include:
- Architecting and designing high-speed, wideband ADCs and DACs for demanding RF and mixed-signal applications
- Leading converter architecture selection and trade studies, balancing bandwidth, sampling rate, resolution, linearity, power, area, and implementation risk
- Designing supporting wideband analog front-ends including ADC input networks, track-and-hold circuits, DAC output stages, references, biasing, clocking, and calibration circuitry
- Developing high-performance circuits in advanced FinFET CMOS technologies and addressing analog design challenges in deeply scaled nodes
- Owning designs from concept and behavioral modeling through transistor-level implementation, layout, verification, and silicon characterization
- Developing calibration and correction techniques for impairments and collaborating with DSP/systems engineers on mixed-signal algorithms
- Defining converter specifications and interfaces in collaboration with systems, RF, digital, package, and verification teams
- Driving converter integration into complex mixed-signal SoCs, including power, clocking, signal integrity, and physical implementation
- Establishing data-converter design methodologies, IP, simulation infrastructure, and best practices from the ground up
- Providing technical leadership and mentorship to analog and mixed-signal engineers
Requirements:
- MS or PhD in Electrical Engineering or related field with significant industry experience in high-performance analog/mixed-signal IC design
- Deep expertise designing GHz-class and/or multi-GS/s ADCs and DACs
- Strong understanding of converter architectures such as SAR, pipeline, time-interleaved, flash/folding, current-steering DACs, and hybrid architectures
- Demonstrated ability to translate system requirements into converter architectures and circuit-level specifications
- Strong experience with wideband analog/RF signal paths, sampling circuits, clocking, references, and low-noise/high-linearity circuit design
- Experience designing high-performance analog circuits in FinFET technologies
- Strong understanding of converter impairments including jitter, noise, distortion, mismatch, timing skew, interleaving errors, and calibration
- Experience taking complex analog/mixed-signal ICs from architecture through tapeout and silicon bring-up
- Deep proficiency with industry-standard analog/mixed-signal design, simulation, and verification tools
Preferred qualifications include experience with RF-sampling or direct-RF ADC/DAC architectures, multi-GHz instantaneous bandwidth converters, digitally-assisted analog design and calibration, integrating converters into large digital-heavy SoCs, advanced packaging and signal-integrity considerations, and building new methodologies and silicon platforms from the ground up.
Note: This role requires U.S. Person status or eligibility for a federally issued export control license due to ITAR compliance.
