Avionics Radiation Hardness Assurance Engineer

Job Summary

We are seeking an Avionics Radiation Hardness Assurance (RHA) Engineer to support NASA’s deep space exploration initiatives. The engineer will develop, implement, and analyze radiation safety solutions to ensure the reliability of spaceflight hardware.

• Support new projects and sustaining efforts throughout the product life cycle, including standards adjudications, system requirements reviews, milestone design reviews, requirements verification (testing, analysis, inspection), risk management, and failure investigations.
• Drive critical decision‑making processes for radiation testing/analysis, deriving part performance classification and taxonomy, and improving vehicle, system, and subsystem level radiation reliability and survivability.
• Tailor RHA requirements based on mission, environment, application, and lifetime (MEAL) factors as well as program/project risk posture.
• Bound stochastic and deterministic electronics failure modes by the natural space radiation environment.
• Collaborate with design engineers, project personnel, external providers, and stakeholders to evaluate electronic hardware performance and address impacts on functional, performance, safety, reliability, and availability metrics.
• Prepare radiation test plans, procedures, reports, analyses, risk assessments, and present conclusions to team members, project engineers, program managers, systems engineers, and formal boards/panels.
• Read and understand schematics for circuit and system diagrams to evaluate upstream and downstream impacts.
• Make recommendations for design, process improvements, and data collection.
• Adapt to technical hurdles and overcome challenges associated with increasing use of industrial‑grade and automotive‑grade components in space applications.
• Work directly with technicians, engineers, managers, and stakeholders on a wide variety of projects and programs.
• Report directly to the Electronics and Electrical Section Manager as part of a team of over 45 Electronics and Electrical Engineers.

• Bachelor’s degree in Electrical, Materials, Aerospace, Nuclear Engineering, Physics or a related field with minimum zero (0) years of related experience, or a Master’s/PhD in a related radiation area.
• Technical knowledge of radiation effects in microelectronics and/or avionics systems, including mechanisms for single‑event effects, total dose, test strategies, mitigation techniques, and circuit/system analysis.
• Familiarity with Radiation Hardness Assurance (RHA) activities: determining MEAL factors, developing and interpreting requirements, bill‑of‑materials gap analysis, radiation testing, environment definition, radiation transport, shielding analysis, dose‑depth curves, Single‑Event Effects Criticality Analysis (SEECA), derating, Safe Operating Area (SOA), Radiation Design Margin (RDM), literature surveys, etc.
• Ability to assess EEEE parts, circuits, functions, components, subsystems, and systems to evaluate risks, effectiveness of mitigation strategies, and compliance with functional, performance, safety, and reliability requirements during and after exposure to ionizing radiation.
• Lead or support screening and characterization test efforts for heavy ion, proton, pulsed‑laser SEE, Total Ionizing Dose (TID), Enhanced Low‑Dose Rate Sensitivity (ELDRS), Total Non‑Ionizing Dose (TNID), Displacement Damage Dose (DDD), and related phenomena.
• Design, troubleshoot, and repair new and existing radiation test setups, including cables, laboratory equipment, PCBs, software, firmware, and hardware description languages.

• Excellent communication and organizational skills with ability to work in a multidisciplinary team.
• Experience with test hardware such as oscilloscopes, multimeters, logic analyzers, function generators, electronic load banks, power supplies, and power analyzers.
• Project‑based experience designing, building, testing, and troubleshooting embedded systems, Internet of Things, power electronics, battery systems, and related electrical hardware (requirements definition, system modeling, simulation, circuit analysis, PCB design, fabrication, verification).
• Familiarity with systems…