Lead Avionics Engineer (NewSpace)
Location: Hawthorne, California, United States
Employment Type: Full-Time | On-Site
Package: Competitive Salary based on Experience + Equity + Benefits + PTO
Are you an end-to-end avionics / electrical engineering specialist who’s passionate about building flight hardware that actually ships – fast?
On offer is the opportunity to join a high-growth space company developing mission-critical hardware designed for extreme environments and real operational constraints. You’ll lead the design, manufacture, and test of avionics and electronic systems across the full product line – owning everything from architecture decisions through to integration and qualification.
Join a team where ownership is real, iteration cycles are short, and your decisions directly shape the reliability, manufacturability, and cost of flight-like hardware. You’ll work closely with mechanical, systems, propulsion, and integration teams to deliver pragmatic electronics that meet aggressive performance targets while driving cost down by orders of magnitude.
This position would suit a hands-on lead engineer with deep spacecraft avionics experience, a bias toward execution, and a proven track record taking hardware from concept to test and delivery.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead the design, build, and test of avionics and electronic devices across multiple space hardware programs.
- Prototype PCBAs for motion control, power management, and radio / communications systems.
- Own system-level trades, define technical specifications, and document decisions using a requirements-driven engineering approach.
- Drive rapid iteration cycles: schematic → layout → build → bring-up → debug → re-spin.
- Interface with mechanical and systems teams to ensure clean integration, robust interfaces, and manufacturable designs.
- Establish qualification and acceptance testing criteria aligned to common aerospace test standards (with published guidelines in mind).
- Lead subsystem and system integration points, ensuring hardware performs under real environments and test conditions.
- Mentor and coordinate a small, fast-moving hardware team – setting pace, standards, and review discipline.
- Support end-to-end hardware delivery through assembly, integration, troubleshooting, and documentation.
Essential Skills and Experience
- Degree in Electrical Engineering (or equivalent demonstrated excellence through professional experience).
- 2+ years’ experience designing, building, testing, and debugging PCBAs.
- Proven ability to own hardware end-to-end from prototype through to production-ready deliverables.
- Strong hands-on capability in lab environments: bring-up, fault isolation, debug, and validation.
- Experience building avionics / space hardware under schedule and resource constraints.
- Strong communication skills and the ability to lead a coordinated engineering effort across teams.
- Bias for practical, low-cost engineering decisions that still meet reliability and performance requirements.
Highly Desirable
- 5+ years’ experience designing and debugging PCBAs for high-reliability systems.
- End-to-end space avionics experience across full lifecycle: architecture, design, build, integration, and test.
- 3+ years within a launch company environment (e.g. major launch providers) or high-tempo space startup setting.
- Experience designing low-BOM-cost electronics for harsh environments and scaling those designs for production.
- Familiarity with up-screening pragmatic commercial components for space / deep-tech use cases.
- Ability to design test support hardware (custom harnessing, fixtures, breakouts) and run structured test campaigns.
Eligibility
Due to export regulations, applicants must be eligible to work under U.S. export compliance requirements (U.S. Person status or ability to obtain required authorisations).
If you’re ready to lead avionics development from architecture to flight-like hardware – and you want genuine ownership in a team that moves quickly – apply now or send your resume to jake.payne@newspacetechnical.com
