Senior Electrical Engineer - Payload Systems

The role

You will design, develop, and integrate electrical systems that power and control the payload. You will also work with other subsystem engineers to integrate designs and perform lab testing and debugging.

What you will do

• Design electrical subsystems such as power distribution, communication, and FDIR.
• Capture requirements and manage trade studies.
• Design and develop reliable PCBAs.
• Source, derate, and test electrical components.
• Take designs from initial concept through schematic capture, layout, and reviews.
• Execute comprehensive test plans.
• Bring up, troubleshoot, and debug electrical systems in a lab using test equipment.
• Maintain engineering documentation and develop electrical interface documents.
• Support assembly, integration, and system-level testing.
• Mentor others and implement improved design practices and standards.

Required qualifications

• B.S. or M.S. in Electrical Engineering or a related field.
• Strong fundamentals in analog/digital circuit design, power systems, signal integrity, layout, and Design for Test/Manufacturing (DFT/DFM).
• Experience with embedded control, architectures featuring FPGAs, MCUs, and communication buses (I2C, SPI, CAN, RS-422, Ethernet, etc).
• Understanding of reliability methods, including Worst-Case Circuit Analysis (WCCA), part derating, and FMEA.
• 5+ years of experience taking designs from schematic to layout, manufacturing, test and system integration.
• Proficiency with electrical design and simulation tools (e.g., Altium, OrCAD, Spice).
• Proven lab experience with hardware bring-up, board-level troubleshooting, and test automation.
• Collaborative, team-oriented mindset and the ability to communicate effectively.
• Rigorous attention to detail and a commitment to continuous process improvement.
• Mentorship mindset with a desire to build repeatable engineering practices.

Nice to have

• Exposure to satellite systems, bus avionics or payload electronics.
• Working knowledge of space radiation effects and space design practices.
• Experience with EMI/EMC design and mitigation

Before you apply

• For U.S. Roles: applicant must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the United States (i.e. Green Card holder), or other protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3).
• For U.K. Roles: requires Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS) checks, and successful candidates must be eligible to obtain UK Security Clearance (SC).
• For Canada Roles: Successful candidates must obtain and hold a security clearance at the reliability status level, and pass security assessment for the Canadian Controlled Goods Program (CGP) and ITAR

About the company

Xona is the navigational intelligence company bringing real-time, centimeter-level certainty to any device, anywhere on Earth. With Pulsar, Xona will offer a future-proof, backwards-compatible global positioning system optimized for absolute precision, superior power, and robust protection.