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Varda Space Industries is building commercial space infrastructure, including in-orbit pharmaceutical processing systems and reentry capsules. The company designs and operates its W-Series vehicles end-to-end, from satellite buses to heat shields to processing payloads.
As Senior Automation and Controls Engineer, you will design, build, and own sophisticated ground support equipment (GSE) and test systems that qualify spaceflight hardware for orbit. This includes propulsion test stands, environmental qualification chambers, spacecraft-level integration testing, and more. You'll work with Varda's modern tech stack, including a custom PLC framework and Beckhoff EtherCAT tooling built in-house.
Key responsibilities:
- Design and maintain test systems and GSE for flight hardware qualification and manufacturing operations
- Integrate with diverse external hardware: thermal vacuum chambers, ovens, chillers, pressure systems, data acquisition hardware, and precision instrumentation
- Develop and extend Varda's internal PLC framework and EtherCAT tooling
- Contribute to architecture decisions on real-time control implementation, evaluating PLC-based (TwinCAT 3) versus Linux-based approaches
- Build cabinets, wire panels, and own systems end-to-end from electrical design through commissioning
- Partner with propulsion, avionics, GNC, and manufacturing teams to deliver test infrastructure on aggressive timelines
- Champion sustainable engineering practices to enable team ramp-up and system reliability
Required qualifications:
- Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or related field
- 5+ years in test automation, controls, and/or industrial automation
- Hands-on experience integrating industrial hardware over EtherCAT, Modbus (TCP/RTU), RS-232/485 serial, or similar protocols
- Experience with modern PLC ecosystems, ideally Beckhoff TwinCAT 3 with structured text (IEC 61131-3)
- Full-stack comfort: control software, electrical panel design, cabinet wiring, hardware debugging
- Proven ability to thrive in fast-paced startup environments with shifting priorities and end-to-end ownership
Preferred experience includes real-time PLC versus Python orchestration tradeoff understanding, custom control frameworks, advanced EtherCAT expertise (DC sync, ENI configuration, master implementation), deterministic hard real-time control loops with sub-millisecond cycle times, time-series data acquisition tools (Grafana, InfluxDB), aerospace/spacecraft testing background, and environmental test experience (TVAC, thermal cycling, vibration testing).
