PCB Design Engineer

Powerus is building a next-generation American autonomous systems platform designed to move, protect, and sustain critical assets in high-consequence environments. The company combines advanced autonomy, manufacturing capability, operational expertise, and strategic acquisitions to support defense, national security, critical infrastructure, and commercial operations globally.

Our mission is to deliver resilient autonomous technologies that strengthen national security, improve operational safety, and expand the capabilities of organizations operating in complex environments.

An architecture only becomes an aircraft once someone turns it into copper. Layer stackups, return paths, footprint accuracy, and the tolerances a fabricator and an assembly house can actually hold are what decide whether a board works on the first article or costs a spin. As Powerus moves its platforms from prototype quantities into production build in North Carolina and California, that work stops being a drafting task and becomes a schedule-critical discipline.

This role is the one that realizes the boards. You will take architecture from the avionics, power, and payload teams and carry it through schematic capture, layout, and fabrication into hardware that comes back clean, buildable, and repeatable. It is a hands‑on seat with a short loop between a decision you make and a board you hold.

Powerus is hiring a PCB Design Engineer to own schematic capture and multilayer board layout across our unmanned platforms. This position requires U.S. Person status, as the work involves access to export‑controlled technical data. You will translate hardware architecture into manufacturable designs, maintain the component and footprint libraries the rest of engineering builds from, and work directly with fabrication and assembly vendors on stackup, tolerance, and process questions.

You will partner with avionics, power, RF, and manufacturing engineers, and you will see your designs through fabrication, assembly, and first‑article inspection.

• Capture schematics from hardware architecture and requirements, and keep them consistent with the interface and power definitions they come from
• Lay out multilayer boards including placement, routing, plane definition, and layer stackup for mixed digital, analog, power, and RF sections
• Select components against electrical requirements, availability, footprint accuracy, and NDAA and Blue UAS sourcing constraints
• Own the component library - symbols, footprints, land patterns, and 3D models - and the review process that keeps new parts correct before they reach a board
• Apply signal integrity and power integrity practice in layout: controlled impedance, return path continuity, decoupling strategy, and length and skew management on critical nets
• Design for manufacturability, assembly, and test - panelization, fiducials, courtyard and clearance rules, test point coverage, and stencil and process considerations
• Prepare and release fabrication and assembly documentation, including drawings, netlists, output packages, BOMs, and revision control
• Work with fab and assembly vendors through design for manufacturing review, quoting, first article, and yield or process feedback
• Run and document design reviews with hardware, mechanical, and manufacturing engineers, and track review findings to closure

• Must be located in the United States, within commuting distance of Charlotte, NC, and able to work on‑site
• Degree in electrical engineering, electronics technology, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience
• Experience capturing schematics and laying out multilayer printed circuit boards in a professional ECAD tool such as Altium Designer, Cadence Allegro, or Ki Cad
• Working understanding of layer stackup, controlled impedance, return paths, and grounding as they apply to layout decisions
• Familiarity with component packaging, footprint construction, and library management, including how a wrong land pattern shows up at assembly
• Comfort reading datasheets and mechanical drawings, and reconciling electrical, mechanical, and enclosure…