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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 and processing payloads.
As a Senior Ground Support Equipment Engineer, you will design, build, and own sophisticated test infrastructure that qualifies 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, build, and maintain test systems and GSE for flight hardware qualification and manufacturing operations
- Integrate with external hardware including thermal vacuum chambers, ovens, chillers, pressure systems, data acquisition hardware, and precision instrumentation
- Develop and extend Varda's internal PLC framework and EtherCAT tooling to support evolving program needs
- 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 that enable new engineers to ramp quickly and maintain production systems reliably
Required qualifications:
- Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or related field
- 5+ years of industry experience in test automation, controls, and/or industrial automation
- Hands-on experience integrating with industrial hardware over protocols such as EtherCAT, Modbus (TCP/RTU), RS-232/485 serial, or similar standards
- Experience with at least one modern PLC ecosystem, ideally Beckhoff TwinCAT 3 with structured text (IEC 61131-3)
- Comfort working across the full stack: writing control software, designing electrical panels, wiring cabinets, and debugging hardware
- Proven ability to thrive in a fast-paced startup environment with shifting priorities and end-to-end ownership expectations
Preferred qualifications include strong intuition for PLC versus Python orchestration tradeoffs, experience with custom in-house control frameworks, advanced EtherCAT expertise, production TwinCAT 3 experience, deterministic hard real-time control loop design, familiarity with time-series data tools like Grafana or InfluxDB, aerospace experience, and environmental test experience (TVAC, thermal cycling, vibration).
