Staff Electrical Engineer, Hardware Test

What you'll do:

• Own the technical strategy, architecture, and roadmap for electrical test equipment supporting X-BAT avionics, power, communications, actuation, and other aircraft subsystems.
• Identify program verification risks and capability gaps; convert them into prioritized investments, platform decisions, development plans, and clear technical ownership.
• Define common architectures for racks, stands, interface units, power and fault insertion, instrumentation, data acquisition, timing, automation, diagnostics, and operator interfaces.
• Lead the most complex or novel test-equipment programs through requirements, trade studies, architecture, detailed design, build, integration, acceptance, deployment, and sustainment.
• Set and uphold engineering standards for schematics, PCB and harness design, calibration, documentation, and release readiness.
• Establish system-safety expectations for energized test equipment, including hazard analysis, safe-state design, interlocks, isolation, emergency stops, access control, and verification of protective functions.
• Chair high-consequence architecture, design, and readiness reviews; make or drive closure on cross-domain technical decisions and unresolved risks.
• Partner with systems and design engineering to define testable requirements, electrical interfaces, built-in observability, fault isolation, and verification approaches before aircraft designs are released.
• Develop strategies for equipment reliability, availability, maintainability, calibration, obsolescence, spares, vendor support, and recovery from failures during critical test campaigns.
• Lead cross-functional root-cause investigations that span test equipment, units under test, software, facilities, manufacturing, and supplier processes; ensure corrective actions improve both products and test capability.
• Make informed build-versus-buy decisions and provide technical direction to vendors, integrators, technicians, and partner teams delivering portions of the test ecosystem.
• Define and use meaningful operating metrics such as first-pass acceptance, schedule predictability, equipment uptime, test repeatability, recurring anomalies, action closure, and reuse of proven designs.
• Mentor senior and developing engineers, delegate architecture and project ownership effectively, and improve the quality of technical reasoning and review across the organization.

Required qualifications:

• B.S. in Electrical Engineering or a related STEM discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
• 8+ years of relevant industry experience developing complex electrical hardware, automated test equipment, or multidisciplinary verification systems.
• A record of leading multiple hardware development cycles and delivering equipment or products from ambiguous requirements through release, deployment, and sustained use.
• Deep expertise in several relevant domains, such as power electronics, analog and digital design, RF and communications, instrumentation, data acquisition, control systems, signal integrity, grounding, or system safety.
• Demonstrated ability to architect systems that span custom electronics, commercial instruments, harnessing, embedded control, automation software, mechanical equipment, and facility interfaces.
• Strong command of requirements decomposition, interface control, verification planning, design reviews, configuration management, acceptance testing, and technical documentation.
• Experience establishing technical standards or reusable platforms and influencing teams beyond direct project authority.
• Demonstrated success resolving complex cross-domain failures using data, first-principles reasoning, structured root-cause analysis, and disciplined corrective action.
• Ability to communicate technical decisions, risks, and tradeoffs clearly to engineers, operators, program leaders, and executives.
• A record of mentoring engineers, raising technical quality, and delivering exceptional outcomes in a fast-moving environment.

Preferred qualifications:

• Experience architecting aerospace or defense ground-test, qualification-test, hardware-in-the-loop, or production-test systems for flight-critical hardware.
• Experience across several aircraft electrical domains, including high-voltage or high-power systems, batteries, motors and drives, RF, avionics networks, sensors, flight controls, or mission systems.
• Experience scaling a test capability from early prototype equipment to configuration-controlled platforms used across multiple teams, sites, or product phases.
• Experience applying safety and reliability methods such as hazard analysis, FMEA, fault-tree analysis, proof testing, fault insertion, redundancy, and safe-state verification.
• Knowledge of environmental and qualification testing such as thermal, vibration, shock, HALT, HASS, ESS, EMI or EMC, and the controls and instrumentation required to execute it well.
• Working knowledge of standards such as DO-160, MIL-STD-810, MIL-STD-461, IPC, IEEE, NFPA 70E, or equivalent standards relevant to prior work.
• Experience with calibration systems, measurement uncertainty, metrology, data traceability, equipment cybersecurity, or regulated lab and production environments.
• Experience developing capital-equipment plans, managing technical suppliers or integrators, and balancing capability, schedule, cost, and lifecycle risk.
• Eligibility to obtain a U.S. security clearance if required by the program.