Principal Electrical Engineer

The role

The Principal Electrical Engineer provides technical leadership in the architecture, design, and qualification of high-integrity electronic control systems. This individual contributor role involves developing system architectures, schematics, and interface definitions for aircraft products.

What you will do

• Own electrical system architecture for controller electronics, FCCs, LRUs, and sensing systems.
• Architect redundant control architectures based on safety and cost requirements.
• Define partitioning between processors, motor-control electronics, and vehicle-level interfaces.
• Translate system requirements into hardware requirements and verification strategies.
• Select microcontrollers, processors, FPGAs, and communication devices.
• Design and review embedded digital, analog, and mixed-signal electronics.
• Architect fault detection, redundancy management, and safe-state mechanisms.
• Define communication architecture and physical layers for various buses.
• Lead schematic development and critical PCB design reviews using Altium or equivalent.
• Perform worst-case circuit analysis, signal-integrity analysis, and fault analysis.

Required qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering or related field; equivalent professional experience may be considered.
• 12+ years of experience developing and shipping complex electronic systems.
• Demonstrated ownership of system-level electrical architecture for high-reliability products.
• Deep hands-on experience with embedded digital and mixed-signal hardware.
• Strong proficiency with schematic capture and PCB design using Altium or equivalent ECAD tools.
• Strong understanding of processor selection, watchdog and reset architecture, communication interfaces, sensor interfacing, low-voltage power conversion, grounding, isolation, and EMI/EMC.
• Experience designing fault-tolerant or redundant electronic architectures.
• Experience bringing electronic assemblies from concept through prototype, qualification, industrialization, and production.
• Proven ability to lead cross-functional technical decisions.
• Strong lab and debugging capability using oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and related instrumentation.

Nice to have

• Command/monitor or other redundant safety-critical controller architectures.
• Flight control computers, actuator controllers, avionics LRUs, embedded compute platforms, sensor interfaces, or vehicle-control electronics.
• DO-254 hardware development experience and familiarity with DAL-driven hardware architecture and verification.
• Familiarity with DO-160, ARP4754A/B, ARP4761, MIL-STD-461, MIL-STD-704, or comparable safety-critical and environmental standards.
• Experience with CAN / CAN FD, ARINC 825, ARINC 429, Ethernet, RS-422/485, SPI, BiSS, resolver/LVDT interfaces, or similar sensing and communication technologies.
• Experience with safety-oriented or aviation-pedigree microcontrollers and processors.
• FPGA or programmable-logic experience for monitoring, I/O, timing, or safety functions.
• MATLAB, Python, SPICE, or similar tools for analysis, test automation, or data reduction.
• Experience in aerospace, automotive, robotics, consumer hardware, industrial controls, medical devices, or other environments where electronics must be both high-performance and production-ready.

Benefits

• Equity participation
• Growth opportunities
• Full health benefits (health, vision, dental)
• 401(k)

Before you apply

• All final candidates must successfully complete a background check and drug screening as a condition of employment.

About the company

Neon Aero designs, builds, and scales aircraft using automation, AI-driven tools, and a digital backbone. The company combines start-up agility with aerospace expertise to reinvent how the world flies.