Director - Payload Electronics

Digantara is a leading Space Surveillance and Intelligence company focused on ensuring orbital safety and sustainability.With expertise in space-based detection, tracking, identification, and monitoring, Digantara provides comprehensive domain awareness across regimes, allowing end users to have actionable intelligence on a single platform. At the core of its infrastructure lies a sophisticated integration of hardware and software capabilities aligned with the key principles of situational awareness: perception (data collection) , comprehension (data processing) , and prediction (analytics) . This holistic approach empowers Digantara to monitor all Resident Space Objects (RSOs) in orbit, fostering comprehensive domain awareness.

Digantara is seeking a Director of Payload Electronics to lead the design and development of satellite payload electronics and scale a high-performance team. The role involves end-to-end development of payload electronics for image acquisition and edge processing, supporting Space Situational Awareness (SSA) application.

Why Us?

• Competitive incentives, galvanizing workspace, blazing team, frequent outings—pretty much everything you have heard about a startup + you get to work on space technology.
• Hustle in a well-funded startup allowing you to take charge of your responsibilities and create your moonshot.

Ideal Candidate Someone with proven expertise in end-to-end design and development of satellite payload electronics/ground-based imaging systems/electronic systems for high-reliability applications.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with satellite electrical, mechanical and systems engineers to translate the system requirements into specifications of payload electronics.
• Architect and deliver high-performance payload electronics enabling reliable on-orbit image acquisition and edge processing.
• Review the hardware requirements, oversee schematic and PCB layout design activities and thermal management.
• Lead a team of FPGA and embedded software engineers to generate RTL/Firmware design requirements, architecture and verification plans.
• Review the verification and validation, board level test results throughout the development lifecycle.
• Plan and execute the hardware realization and interact with vendors.

Required Qualifications

• B.Tech/B.E in Electronics Engineering or M.Tech/M.E or PhD degree Microelectronics/Embedded systems/Electronics systems/VLSI.
• 8+ years of demonstrated experience in end-to-end design and development of complex electronics systems/satellite payload electronics/ground-based imaging systems built around high-speed FPGA/SoC.
• Proven experience delivering end-to-end electronics hardware from concept to deployment and strong experience with high-speed interfaces (LVDS, DDR, SerDes, etc.)
• Strong hands-on experience in VHDL/Embedded C/C++ with expertise in FPGA/SoC design flow using Vivado/Libero EDA tools.
• Strong expertise in troubleshooting hardware and firmware observations during development lifecycle.
• Experience in working with FPGA/SoC development kits and electronic test equipment.

Preferred Skills

• Experience in developing high reliable imaging systems for satellite payloads is a significant plus.
• Knowledge of the latest advancements in FPGA/SoC based satellite payload electronics development.
• Familiarity with digital image processing techniques.
• Knowledge of algorithm implementation in MATLAB/Python.

General Requirements

• Ability to work in a mission-focused, operational environment.
• Ability to think critically and make independent decisions.
• Interpersonal skills to enable working in a diverse and dynamic team.
• Maintain a regular and predictable work schedule.
• Writing and delivering technical documents and briefings.
• Verbal and written communications skills as well as organizational skills.
• Travel occasionally as necessary.

Job Location: Hebbal, Bengaluru.