Senior Hardware Infrastructure Engineer

Position Title:

Senior Hardware Infrastructure Engineer - GSE (Ground Support Equipment)

Requisition

Position Location:

Sterling, Virginia

Position

Reports To:

Manager, Space Electronic Systems

Supervises Others:
No

At Trident Systems, we believe that strong engineering principles are fundamental to driving innovation and solving complex problems. We promote a culture characterized by rigorous engineering practices and a commitment to continuous improvement. This is achieved by leveraging our organization's collective expertise through collaborative development processes, which include thorough design and peer reviews. We can deliver innovative, high-performance solutions that meet our customers' evolving requirements by integrating our specialized knowledge in aerospace electronic systems with appropriately scaled development methodologies.

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.

Position Summary

The Senior Hardware Infrastructure Engineer - GSE owns the design, build, deployment, and sustainment of ground support hardware infrastructure used to support development, validation, troubleshooting, and production support of complex aerospace electronics and power systems. This role is highly hands-on and spans rack-level hardware architecture, instrumentation integration, power distribution, harness and cable development, fixture design, configuration control, and cross-disciplinary debugging.

The ideal candidate is a practical systems builder who can take concepts from blank-sheet architecture through deployed operational hardware and support engineering teams in diagnosing complex system-level issues.

Duties and Responsibilities

* Design, build, and deploy ground support equipment (GSE) infrastructure including equipment racks, bench systems, fixtures, breakout hardware, adapter panels, and support hardware.

* Develop rack-level hardware architectures including instrumentation layout, power distribution, cable management, grounding, thermal considerations, and serviceability.

* Design, fabricate, document, and maintain custom cable harnesses, interconnect assemblies, and hardware interface solutions.

* Integrate laboratory instrumentation including oscilloscopes, DAQs, DMMs, programmable power supplies, electronic loads, switching systems, network hardware, and specialized test equipment.

* Support development, validation, and troubleshooting of aerospace electronics including embedded computer systems, FPGA-based hardware, digital interfaces, and power electronics.

* Troubleshoot issues spanning wiring, grounding, signal integrity, instrumentation behavior, power distribution, mechanical fit-up, connectorization, and hardware integration.

* Develop reusable hardware infrastructure that supports scalable engineering validation, production support, and automated engineering workflows.

* Own bills of material (BOMs), rack documentation, wiring diagrams, interface documentation, inventory tracking, calibration readiness, and hardware configuration control.

* Assist in selecting COTS instrumentation, electrical hardware, interconnect components, and mechanical hardware to support engineering and production needs.

* Partner with electrical, embedded software, FPGA, systems, and automation engineering teams to support efficient development and debugging workflows.

* Maintain safe lab practices including ESD controls, wiring discipline, grounding practices, and safe operation of powered systems.

* Perform other duties as assigned.

Required Qualifications

* Bachelor's degree and 6+ years of related experience (OR 4+ years of experience with a Master's degree OR 10+ years in lieu of a degree)

* Experience designing, building, or maintaining complex hardware infrastructure, GSE, lab systems, automated equipment, industrial systems, or similar engineering hardware environments.

* Hands-on experience with equipment racks, harnessing, wiring, instrumentation integration, and…