Principal PCB Designer

About us

One team. Global challenges. Infinite opportunities. At Viasat, we’re on a mission to deliver connections with the capacity to change the world. For more than 35 years, Viasat has helped shape how consumers, businesses, governments and militaries around the globe communicate. We’re looking for people who think big, act fearlessly, and create an inclusive environment that drives positive impact to join our team.

We are seeking an experienced Principal PCB Designer to provide senior level technical leadership and execution for complex printed circuit board designs across the Space Infrastructure organization. This role serves as a technical authority for PCB layout, design quality, and execution strategy, while also acting as a team lead to improve consistency, speed, and overall design excellence.

The Principal PCB Designer supports critical development efforts including flight hardware, ground systems, and test equipment boards. This role provides supplemental layout capacity on high risk or resource constrained programs, leads design reviews, and mentors other PCB designers to raise the overall technical bar.

• Provide senior level PCB design leadership across multiple programs and product lines
• Lead PCB layout for the most complex and critical designs, including multilayer, high speed, mixed signal, RF, and power dense boards
• Define component placement strategies, routing architecture, constraint sets, and layer stackups with minimal direction
• Own PCB layout execution from early architectural trade studies through fabrication and assembly release
• Provide expert input on signal integrity, power integrity, EMI and EMC risk mitigation, and layout tradeoffs
• Serve as the technical escalation point for complex layout challenges, design issues, yield concerns, and corrective actions
• Lead and participate in schematic, placement, routing, and release design reviews across programs
• Define, maintain, and improve PCB design standards, constraints, and workflows
• Improve design quality, consistency, and execution speed across the PCB team
• Provide architecture level feedback to electrical, RF, mechanical, manufacturing, thermal, and test engineers
• Work directly with fabrication and assembly partners to address advanced technology, manufacturability, and yield
• Mentor junior and senior PCB designers through hands on guidance, reviews, and technical coaching
• Support prototype build, debug, and iteration efforts in collaboration with hardware and test teams
• Drive low-cost approaches and practices in PCB design

• Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering or a related technical field, or equivalent professional experience
• 10 or more years of professional PCB layout experience with ownership of highly complex designs
• Expert understanding of signal integrity, power integrity, EMI and EMC, high speed digital, RF, and power electronics layout
• Demonstrated experience leading technical reviews and influencing cross functional engineering teams
• Strong experience producing and reviewing complete fabrication and assembly release packages
• Proficiency with Siemens Xpedition
• Ability to operate independently as a technical authority and define solutions to complex problems
• Strong written and verbal communication skills
• Demonstrated examples of reducing cost, complexity, or improving manufacturability of PCBs.
• US Citizenship required
• Ability to travel up to 10%

• Experience serving as the most senior PCB technical resource on a team or program
• Background in space, aerospace, defense, automotive, or other high reliability hardware environments
• Experience with high density designs, fine pitch BGAs, rigid flex, and advanced packaging technologies
• Familiarity with constraint driven design, automation, scripting, or CAD tool customization
• Demonstrated ability to raise design quality, execution efficiency, and organizational best practices
• Comfort mentoring and technically leading other designers without formal management authority

$ - $ / annually. For specific work locations within San Jose, the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, the base pay…