Senior / Lead Power Electronics Engineer (NewSpace)
Location: Los Angeles, California, United States
Employment Type: Full-Time | On-Site
Package: Competitive Salary + Equity + Benefits + Flexible PTO
Are you a power electronics specialist excited by the challenge of designing high-reliability flight hardware for next-generation satellite platforms operating at ultra-low Earth orbit?
On offer is the opportunity to join a high-growth space company pushing the limits of spacecraft performance and survivability. You’ll lead the design and delivery of mission-critical power electronics, owning converter architectures, control strategies, and high-voltage/low-voltage power pathways that enable safe, efficient spacecraft operation across the full mission lifecycle.
Join a team building fast-moving aerospace programs where performance margins, robustness, and manufacturability matter. You’ll work closely with EPS, avionics, propulsion, thermal, systems, and integration teams to drive clean, efficient, space-qualified power designs from concept through to validated flight hardware.
This position would suit a deeply technical engineer who thrives on converter design, hardware ownership, rigorous verification, and bridging the gap between simulation and real-world electrical performance in harsh orbital environments.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead the design, development, and verification of spacecraft power electronics (DC/DC converters, power stages, switching networks, protections).
- Own power converter architecture, component selection, control loop design, and stability analysis.
- Develop and review schematics, PCB layouts, and design-for-manufacture principles for flight hardware.
- Support EPS power conditioning and distribution (PCDU) development including protections, fault handling, and power switching strategies.
- Perform detailed analysis including efficiency, thermal dissipation, transient response, EMC/EMI risk, and worst-case performance.
- Drive component qualification and parts selection for space environments (radiation tolerance, derating, thermal constraints).
- Plan and execute test campaigns: functional, environmental (TVAC), vibration, EMC pre-compliance, and fault injection.
- Lead design reviews (PDR/CDR) and provide technical mentorship across the electrical team.
- Collaborate cross-functionally to define requirements, interfaces, and system-level trade-offs across mass/power/thermal margin.
- Support integration and on-orbit troubleshooting, ensuring rapid issue resolution when performance deviates from expected behaviour.
Essential Skills and Experience
- Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Power Electronics, or similar (Master’s preferred but not required).
- 5+ years’ experience in power electronics design, ideally within aerospace, automotive, defence, robotics, or high-reliability industrial systems.
- Strong experience designing switch-mode power supplies (SMPS) including topologies such as buck/boost, isolated converters, and multi-rail architectures.
- Proven ability to take hardware from concept through schematic, PCB, bring-up, debug, and qualification testing.
- Strong understanding of EMI/EMC principles, grounding, layout constraints, and mitigation strategies.
- Experience with power electronics simulation and analysis tools (SPICE, MATLAB/Simulink, or equivalent).
- Confident working hands-on with test equipment (oscilloscopes, power analysers, electronic loads) in a lab environment.
- Strong communication and leadership skills – able to own designs, run reviews, and guide engineers through delivery.
If you’re ready to lead power electronics development for high-performance spacecraft and deliver flight-ready hardware that operates where others can’t, apply now or send your CV to jake.payne@newspacetechnical.com
