Hardware Design Engineer

About the Role

Hardware Design Engineer

Location: On-site at HQ — Costa Mesa, CA (initial 6-month duration)

Contract: 6 months to start

Start: New hires should become productive within ~1 week via on-the-job training

Interview Process

• Phone screen
• Technical interview
• Panel interview at the Costa Mesa office

Security / Clearance: US citizenship required

Why Hiring

Hiring ~7 engineers to support hardware development tasks for an electromechanical propulsion product over a 6-month period.

End Product: Electromechanical propulsion product hardware

Tech / Domain Environment

• ~70% design-centric role
• Altium Designer is the primary required tool
• Cadence, RCAD, or Mentor Graphics experience offers some flexibility
• Aerospace experience is not required — domain expertise matters more than industry background
• Covers analog, digital, and power electronics , especially:
• Sensors
• Motor drivers
• PCB design

Job Duties

• Conduct architectural investigations
• Perform root cause analysis
• Perform worst-case analysis
• Analyze electrical derating performance
• Support hardware–software integration
• Improve manufacturing scalability
• Work across the full hardware development lifecycle (not primarily a test engineer role)
• Support hardware development for an electromechanical propulsion product

Must Haves

• Hardware design engineering experience across the hardware development lifecycle
• Experience with analog, digital, and power electronics
• Experience with sensors, motor drivers, and PCB design
• Altium Designer experience

Technical depth expected:

• Explain buck-converter operation , including inductor current paths when the gate pulse is high and low
• Select a buck-converter inductor using % current-ripple range and a capacitor using % voltage-ripple range
• Explain high-side buck-converter switch drive concepts: charge pump, bootstrap, isolated bias supply, gate driver — and which option to use and why
• Explain switching and conduction losses in a buck-converter FET (equations / how to find switching-loss equation)
• Explain linear-mode FET operation and losses (loss equation + datasheet checks for linear operation)
• Draw non-inverting amplifier and differential amplifier schematics and provide the Vin ? Vout equation
• Explain anti-aliasing filters , PCB placement, cutoff-frequency formula, and sampling frequency for a 150 kHz signal
• Draw the physical I2C circuit (master ? slave) and explain clock and data lines
• Draw the physical SPI circuit (master ? slave) and explain MOSI, MISO, CS, and Clock
• Propose and justify a 6-layer PCB stackup distributing power, ground, and signal layers for analog sensors, a power supply, and a microcontroller

Nice to Haves

• Cadence, RCAD, or Mentor Graphics familiarity
• Aerospace experience
• Product experience in propulsion
• Experience bands represented across openings: ~2–4 years , 4–8 years , or 8+ years