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Astranis builds advanced satellites for high orbits, serving large enterprises, sovereign governments, and the US military. With five satellites on orbit and a backlog exceeding $1 billion in commercial contracts, the company is expanding manufacturing capabilities at its 153,000 sq. ft. Northern California headquarters.
As Senior Production Quality Engineer, you will play a key role in ensuring high-reliability satellite hardware meets rigorous spaceflight standards. You'll work closely with engineering and production teams to solve complex quality challenges, lead root cause investigations, and drive continuous improvement across manufacturing operations.
Key responsibilities include performing quality functions such as nonconformance resolution, first article inspection, root cause analysis, corrective actions, and statistical process control. You'll collaborate with design engineering to develop standards for part drawings, including identification of key characteristics, dimensioning, GD&T, and first article inspection plans for electro-mechanical assemblies. You'll write and maintain quality management system (QMS) documentation governing design, build, and test processes, and perform process validation for new manufacturing processes in collaboration with production engineering.
Additional duties include monitoring key quality metrics such as product yield and in-process inspection results to identify trends and improvement opportunities, participating in quality reviews and audits to ensure adherence to process requirements and design intent, supporting process improvements that enhance manufacturability and reduce defects, and contributing to factory standards such as ESD handling, tool calibration, and cleanliness requirements.
Required qualifications: Bachelor's degree in science or engineering; 6+ years in quality or manufacturing engineering (3+ with MS/PhD); experience with inspection techniques, electronics troubleshooting, and GD&T principles; proficiency with CAD, PLM, or ERP systems (Solidworks, Altium, Arena); basic Python or SQL for data analysis; familiarity with root cause analysis and quality tools (5 Whys, Fishbone, Pareto); hands-on experience qualifying manufacturing processes for electronics and mechanical assemblies; and ability to review design documentation and implement first-article inspection plans.
Bonus qualifications include knowledge of spaceflight hardware design and standards, demonstrated project ownership in quality systems deployment, experience leading production containments, and strong SQL/Python skills for managing large datasets and creating dashboards.
