Avionics Hardware Engineer (Aerospace)

Location: Hawthorne, California; hybrid workplace with on-site activities

Salary: $140,000–$230,000 per year

Company

Astrolab designs and builds lunar rovers, power systems, and data networks for sustained operations on the Moon.

What you will do

• Own avionics units for command and data handling, guidance and navigation, power, motor control, and communications from concept through build, qualification, flight integration, and lunar operations.
• Lead make-or-buy decisions and evaluate, select, and qualify COTS components for radiation, thermal, and reliability performance.
• Define requirements and interface control documents, review vendor designs, and manage custom hardware development through delivery and issue resolution.
• Design in-house avionics hardware, including component selection, analysis, schematic capture, circuit board design, board bring-up, debugging, and documentation.
• Perform power efficiency, signal integrity, worst-case, and FMECA analyses, and execute qualification testing including vibration, shock, TVAC, EMI/EMC, and radiation testing.
• Collaborate with mechanical, software, manufacturing, and test engineers on subsystem integration, vehicle integration, troubleshooting, and failure investigations.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in a STEM-related field.
• At least 1 year of experience in avionics component design, spacecraft systems design, or electronics integration and test.
• Hands-on experience with oscilloscopes, multimeters, function generators, and logic analyzers.
• Experience with digital communication protocols such as RS-422, RS-485, SPI, I2C, CAN, or Ethernet.
• Experience with spacecraft power systems, FPGA or MCU embedded systems, analysis tools, and avionics design tools is preferred.
• Senior and staff-level candidates should have experience owning avionics units end to end, leading make-or-buy decisions, and mentoring engineers.

Nice to have

• Experience with COTS electronics qualification, radiation effects and mitigation, EEE-INST-002, and environmental testing standards.
• Experience with motor controllers, LTspice, MATLAB, Python, Altium, E3, or Siemens NX.

Culture & Benefits

• Inclusive engineering environment focused on trust, diverse perspectives, quality, and purposeful execution.
• Equity ownership in the company.
• Medical, dental, vision, and mental health benefits.
• 401(k) plan with company match, flexible PTO, and parental leave.
• On-site lunch stipend, snacks, beverages, and monthly social hours.

Hiring process

• Application review followed by a recruiter phone interview.
• Video interviews and an on-site interview.
• Offer and hiring decision.