Sr. Electrical Design Engineer; Raptor Avionics

Sr. Electrical Design Engineer (Raptor Avionics)

Hawthorne, CA

Space

X was founded under the belief that a future where humanity is exploring the stars is fundamentally more exciting than one where we are not. Today Space

X is actively developing the technologies to make this possible, with the ultimate goal of enabling human life on Mars.

The Raptor Avionics team is responsible for delivering all electrical control and sensing hardware for Raptor, the world's most advanced rocket engine. As an Electrical Engineer on the Raptor Avionics team, you will have the unique opportunity to explore all areas of a product’s life cycle: requirements definition, development, qualification, production, launch, and reuse. In addition to serving as the extreme owner of the product over the course of its life, you will be expected to analyze and troubleshoot electronic assemblies, define new processes, design and analyze robust, efficient circuits, and identify opportunities for improvement in both products and processes.

You will have the opportunity to own a wide variety of components that enable Space

X vehicles to provide the safest and most reliable access to space.

The nature of this position requires someone who is interested in a multidisciplinary organization, working with a range of technologies including electronics, high pressure hardware, and electromechanical actuators. Additionally, this person must have a strong desire to apply data analytics to drive continuous improvement across the organization.

• Design new hardware, redesign existing hardware, and perform modifications to PCBAs to improve their reliability and manufacturability or expand vehicle capabilities
• Provide extreme ownership of avionics hardware for flight across all areas of the product life cycle
• Drive changes to electrical schematics and mechanical drawings that improve reliability and manufacturability
• Perform root cause investigations to characterize off‑nominal unit behavior and mitigate risk
• Derive engineering justification to resolve production issues throughout assembly, test, and vehicle integration
• Design test setups and execute hardware validation through benchtop and environmental testing

• Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering or computer engineering
• 5+ years professional experience designing electronics

• Passion for spaceflight and demonstrated experience designing high quality electronics for high reliability applications
• Experience developing new hardware, not just incremental updates
• Experience working through system trades, pushing back on requirements, and following through with verification and validation
• Self‑starter with demonstrated experience on multiple projects making hardware work within demanding time and resource constraints
• High level of proficiency with designing signal conditioning circuits, digital circuits, and switching power converters, as demonstrated by successful fielding of multiple products
• Proficiency with schematic capture and board layout, producing clean and maintainable designs, preferably in Altium or Circuit Maker
• Knowledge of digital communications interfaces including SPI, I2C, CAN, Ethernet, and RS422
• Knowledge of common circuit blocks including filters, power supplies, and microcontrollers
• High level of proficiency with circuit simulation tools and formal analysis methods, such as derating and worst‑case circuit analysis
• High level of proficiency with lab equipment for development testing of circuits and components, including sophisticated test definition, troubleshooting, data collection, and data reduction techniques
• Proficient at board level rework in support of development testing
• Solid working knowledge of EMI/EMC underlying physics and specifications, along with best practices for design, and strategies for addressing test exceedances
• Experience producing high‑rate designs which are optimized for manufacturability and cost
• Proficiency writing software for test automation, data review, and design analysis, preferably in MATLAB or Python
• Cross‑functional project management skills and ability to collaborate with other engineering…