SENIOR PCB DESIGNER

About the role

Own ZoneFly's PCB design across the entire aircraft — flight controller, motor control, power distribution, perception compute and secure datalink — from schematic capture through EMC qualification and volume production. This role exists to design boards that survive 12,000 rpm of motor noise, a transmitting radio 40 mm away, −40 °C to +70 °C, vibration, and a fault that must never take the aircraft down — and then build a hundred identical copies of it. RF and datalink hardware is the sharpest edge of it: ZoneLink is what keeps the aircraft under our customer's control, and it is designed in-house for exactly that reason.

Key responsibilities

• Own schematic capture and layout for the full ZoneFly board set: ZonePilot flight controller, ZoneFusion compute carriers, sensor and interface boards, power distribution, and ZoneLink radio hardware
• Define stackups and floorplans that survive the aircraft — controlled impedance, clean return paths, deliberate ground partitioning, and isolation between switching power, sensitive analog, and RF
• Design multilayer, high-density boards (8–12+ layers, HDI where it earns its place) with component placement driven by thermal, EMI, and serviceability
• Own power integrity: rail budgets, decoupling strategy, PDN impedance targets, sequencing, brown-out and inrush behaviour, and the failure modes each rail can present to the aircraft
• Design RF sections end to end: front-end topology, filtering, matching networks, PA/LNA chains, GNSS front ends, and impedance-controlled feed routing to the antenna interface
• Own RF stackup and materials selection (low-loss laminates, hybrid builds), via fencing, shielding cans, and enclosure-level isolation between transmit, receive, and GNSS
• Lay out high-current switching stages: gate-drive loops, commutation loops, shunt and current-sense placement, and copper geometry sized for real thermal and transient duty
• Run signal-integrity analysis on high-speed interfaces — DDR, PCIe, USB, MIPI, Ethernet, high-rate serial — with length matching, crosstalk, and termination decided by simulation
• Own EMC from the first stackup decision, not from the first failed test report. Run in-house pre-compliance scanning, close findings by design, and take boards through formal EMC and environmental testing
• Take boards through prototype → pilot → volume: DFM and DFA reviews with the fabricator and EMS partner, panelization, assembly process, and yield

About you

• 8+ years in PCB design and electronics hardware, with boards that reached qualified volume production — not prototypes only
• UAV, aerospace, avionics or satellite hardware experience — flight-critical electronics under vibration and thermal extremes
• Expert-level schematic capture and multilayer layout: 8–12+ layers, HDI, controlled impedance, mixed-signal partitioning
• Defense or dual-use programs, and familiarity with MIL-STD-461 / MIL-STD-810 or DO-160 style qualification
• Demonstrated RF design and layout: impedance-controlled routing, matching, RF stackups and materials, shielding, and measured RF performance you can defend
• Motor drive and high-power electronics: gate drive, commutation loop layout, IMS or heavy-copper design
• Strong power integrity and PDN design — rail budgeting, decoupling strategy, sequencing, and transient behaviour
• Hands-on EMI/EMC: you have taken a product through formal EMC, and you have fixed a failure by design rather than by ferrite
• Professional command of at least one production EDA tool (Altium Designer, Cadence Allegro, KiCad, Zuken) including library and release discipline
• Embedded firmware literacy — enough to bring up your own board and hold a real conversation with the firmware team

About us

ZoneFly is a UAV technology and systems engineering company headquartered in Bangkok, developing fixed-wing VTOL aircraft and the full flight-critical stack that runs on them — flight control, propulsion, motor control, secure datalink, perception, and ground segment. Our customers are across Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Canada, civil and defense. We design our own electronics because sovereignty matters to our customers. No black boxes we cannot open, no radio we cannot audit, no dependency on a supply chain we do not control. That principle runs from the RF front end to the last decoupling capacitor. We are a small engineering team shipping real aircraft into the air. There is no layer of process between a designer and the consequence of their design.

Benefits

• Social security and statutory coverage, private health insurance, annual leave per Thai law and above where earned
• Workstation-class hardware, licensed EDA and simulation tooling, and lab instrumentation of your specification
• Structured path to Lead, Electronics Hardware with progression assessed against delivered outcomes: boards released to volume, EMC and environmental qualification closed, supplier base built, and engineers you have raised