Principal Electrical Engineer

Position Title: Principal Electrical Engineer

Requisition : 1701

Position Location: Fairfax, VA

Position

Reports To:

Senior Manager, Electrical Engineering

Supervises Others: No

At Trident Systems Space Electronic Systems (SES) division, we believe in the power of using strong engineering principles to drive innovation and solve complex problems. We foster a culture of rigorous engineering and continuous improvement, leveraging the full knowledge of our organization through collaborative product development processes that include design and peer reviews. We combine our expertise in space electronics with right‑sized development processes to create innovative, high‑performance space‑based electronic systems that meet our customers' evolving needs.

We are a mission partner supporting DoD, Intelligence Community, and Civil space customers. We develop complex, radiation‑effects mitigated, designs that balance competing requirements in modern space programs, delivering cutting‑edge solutions that enable our customers to achieve more in space.

The Principal Electrical Engineer serves as a senior technical leader within Trident Systems’ Space Electronic Systems (SES) division, responsible for architecting, developing, and guiding advanced embedded hardware solutions for space and defense applications. This role provides deep subject matter expertise across the full hardware development lifecycle—from requirements definition through design, integration, test, and delivery—while ensuring designs meet stringent performance, reliability, and radiation‑mitigation requirements.

The Principal Hardware Engineer partners closely with cross‑functional engineering teams, program leadership, and customers to solve complex technical challenges, support program execution and business development efforts, and shape the long‑term technology roadmap for the organization.

• Manage engineering discipline personnel
• Subject matter expert for embedded hardware engineering discipline
• Lead embedded hardware development process: requirements specification, characterization, simulation, high‑speed digital design, signal processing, schematic capture, PCB layout and routing, PCA testing, and system integration
• Conduct peer reviews of design work and documentation
• Provide technical guidance to discipline team, other engineering teams, PMO, EGD and VP
• Support project execution as needed based on severity of resource demand and challenge of design
• Cost Account Management
• Support business development efforts
• Represent Trident Systems Engineering with customer and vendor interface as a subject matter expert
• Support ES technology roadmap by identifying goals for department and plans for execution
• Ability to support travel or off‑site work, as needed.
• Perform other duties as assigned.

• Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering or related technical degree
• 9+ years of related experience with a Bachelor’s degree OR 7+ years with a Master’s degree
• Experience with mixed‑signal PCA development, utilizing High Density Interconnect (HDI) PCBs and high speed (> 1 GHz) components/circuits
• Experience with FPGA and microprocessor development, including hardware descriptor languages (i.e. Verilog, VHDL)
• Experience with hardware integration, test, and debug tools such as logic analyzers, scopes, emulators
• Demonstrated experience implementing PCI, PCIe, cPCI, VME, or VPX standards (VITA 46, VITA 65)

Hired applicants may be eligible for benefits including but not limited to:

• Health benefits
• Medical
• Dental
• Vision
• Basic life with AD&D
• Short‑term disability
• Long term disability
• Ancillary (Voluntary life with AD&D, accident, critical illness, hospital, and pet)
• Spending accounts (HSA, FSA, and DCFSA)
• Paid time off
• Holidays
• 401(k) (including company match)
• Tuition reimbursement
• Leaves (Parental, maternity, and military)
• Annual discretionary bonus (for eligible roles)

Trident Systems reserves the right to change or assign other duties to this position.

Trident Systems is an affirmative action and equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without…