Avionics & Electrical Power Engineer

Position Overview

Parallax Space is seeking a Avionics & Electrical Power Engineer to design, develop, integrate, and qualify electrical power systems for spacecraft, payloads, and mission hardware. This is a mid-to-senior-level role with direct ownership of power architecture, power distribution, and battery design across the full product lifecycle.

The engineer will translate mission and product requirements into reliable, manufacturable electrical power systems encompassing generation, energy storage, regulation, conversion, protection, switching, and distribution. The role will own power budgets and operating profiles; size batteries and power-distribution hardware; develop and review schematics, interfaces, and analyses; and support hardware through procurement, build, integration, environmental test, delivery, and mission operations.

The successful candidate will combine strong spacecraft power-system fundamentals with practical hardware judgment. This individual must be comfortable moving between system-level trades and detailed design, working directly with multidisciplinary engineering teams and suppliers, troubleshooting integrated hardware, and making timely decisions in a fast-paced development environment.

The position may be filled at the mid-level or senior level based on the candidate's experience, technical depth, and demonstrated scope of ownership.

Key Responsibilities

Electrical Power System Architecture

• Develop end-to-end electrical power system architectures for spacecraft, payloads, and mission hardware
• Translate mission requirements and operational concepts into power-generation, storage, conversion, distribution, and protection requirements
• Create and maintain power budgets, energy balances, peak-load assessments, mode-based load profiles, efficiency estimates, and system margins
• Size solar-array interfaces, batteries, power converters, regulators, distribution channels, harnesses, protection devices, and related hardware
• Perform architecture trades addressing regulated and unregulated buses, voltage selection, redundancy, fault tolerance, scalability, recurring cost, and mission life
• Define and control electrical interfaces, grounding and bonding approaches, power-quality requirements, and compatibility across subsystems
• Support system design reviews and clearly communicate architecture decisions, margins, assumptions, and technical risks

Power Distribution & Conversion

• Design and develop power distribution units, power conditioning and distribution units, electronic power systems, and related spacecraft power electronics
• Define load-switching, current-limiting, inrush-control, overvoltage, undervoltage, short-circuit, reverse-polarity, and fault-containment strategies
• Develop or evaluate DC-DC converters, point-of-load regulation, battery charge and discharge electronics, bus regulation, and power switching circuits
• Establish channel allocation, load shedding, safe-state behavior, redundancy, telemetry, command, and fault-response requirements
• Create and review schematics, electrical block diagrams, interface-control documents, wiring diagrams, component selections, and printed circuit board layouts
• Evaluate power integrity, conducted emissions and susceptibility, grounding, isolation, transient response, ripple, stability, efficiency, and thermal performance
• Partner with avionics, flight software, systems, and mission operations teams to implement power control, monitoring, autonomy, and fault management

Battery & Energy Storage Design

• Lead battery architecture, cell selection, pack sizing, configuration, and performance assessment for spacecraft and payload applications
• Develop battery requirements addressing energy, power, voltage, depth of discharge, cycle life, calendar life, radiation, temperature, storage, and mission duration
• Design or oversee cell balancing, state-of-charge monitoring, charge control, protection, fusing, isolation, telemetry, and battery management functions
• Perform charge and discharge modeling, capacity and degradation analysis, duty-cycle assessment, fault analysis, and operating-margin evaluation
• Coordinate battery electrical, thermal, mechanical, safety, handling, shipping, storage, and integration requirements across the product team
• Evaluate cells, modules, battery assemblies, and suppliers using test data, heritage, qualification status, manufacturability, availability, and mission risk
• Develop battery development, screening, acceptance, qualification, and life-test plans in coordination with test and mission assurance teams

Analysis, Reliability & Technical Documentation

• Perform circuit analysis, worst-case analysis, component derating, tolerance analysis, efficiency assessment, thermal dissipation analysis, and electrical stress evaluation
• Contribute to failure modes and effects analysis, fault-tree analysis, reliability assessments, hazard analyses, and single-point-failure reviews
• Select electrical and electronic parts appropriate for the mission environment, availability needs, producibility, and program risk posture
• Maintain requirements, calculations, models, design descriptions, interface definitions, test procedures, reports, and verification evidence under configuration control
• Ensure designs comply with applicable internal standards, customer requirements, workmanship expectations, and mission-assurance practices
• Identify technical risks early and develop practical mitigation, development-test, qualification, or redesign plans

Hardware Development & Production Readiness

• Support hardware development from breadboard and engineering models through qualification and flight production
• Partner with mechanical, thermal, systems, avionics, software, manufacturing, quality, and supply chain teams throughout the design lifecycle
• Apply design-for-manufacturing, design-for-test, design-to-cost, modularity, and component-availability principles to power hardware
• Generate and release engineering drawings, bills of material, specifications, test requirements, and manufacturing documentation
• Support supplier selection, technical evaluations, design reviews, source inspections, first-article builds, and issue resolution
• Investigate nonconformances and failures, perform root-cause analysis, and implement corrective actions that improve reliability and yield
• Support configuration changes and product improvements while protecting qualified design baselines and customer commitments

Integration, Test & Qualification

• Develop verification plans and procedures for power-system functional, performance, fault-response, efficiency, stability, and margin testing
• Define electrical ground support equipment, battery simulators, solar-array simulators, loads, instrumentation, and automated test needs
• Support board-, unit-, subsystem-, and vehicle-level integration and test activities
• Lead troubleshooting of power anomalies using laboratory instrumentation, telemetry, software data, schematics, and structured root-cause methods
• Support environmental qualification and acceptance testing including thermal vacuum, vibration, shock, electromagnetic compatibility, and mission-representative cycling
• Analyze test results, document compliance, disposition anomalies, and close verification evidence
• Provide technical support during delivery, launch-site processing, commissioning, and on-orbit operations as required

Cross-Functional & Customer Execution

• Work closely with program leadership to maintain credible technical plans, schedules, estimates, and resource requirements
• Participate in customer meetings, design reviews, technical interchange meetings, and proposal development
• Translate customer needs into executable power-system solutions while maintaining clear control of scope, interfaces, assumptions, and risk
• Support make, buy, or partner decisions and technical management of external power-system and battery suppliers
• Mentor junior engineers and contribute to engineering standards, reusable designs, analysis tools, and lessons learned
• Communicate technical status, tradeoffs, risks, and decisions clearly to engineering teams, leadership, customers, and suppliers

Qualifications

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field
• 5+ years of experience designing or developing electrical power systems, power electronics, batteries, or related high-reliability hardware
• Experience with spacecraft, satellite, payload, aerospace, defense, or other mission-critical electrical systems
• Demonstrated understanding of electrical power architecture, power distribution, conversion, regulation, switching, protection, and fault management
• Hands-on experience with battery sizing, cell or pack selection, charging, discharging, protection, performance analysis, and integration
• Experience developing power budgets, load profiles, energy balances, electrical interfaces, and system-level trade studies
• Experience creating or reviewing schematics, component selections, printed circuit board layouts, wiring diagrams, and electrical design documentation
• Experience performing circuit analysis, worst-case analysis, derating, tolerance analysis, efficiency assessment, and electrical troubleshooting
• Experience supporting hardware through design reviews, build, integration, test, qualification, and delivery
• Proficiency with laboratory equipment such as power supplies, electronic loads, oscilloscopes, multimeters, data-acquisition systems, and power analyzers
• Strong written and verbal communication skills and the ability to operate effectively across multidisciplinary teams
• Ability to work hands-on in a fast-paced development and production environment
• Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. security clearance

Preferred Qualifications

• 8+ years of directly relevant experience for consideration at the senior level
• Direct experience designing spacecraft electrical power systems, power distribution units, power conditioning and distribution units, or battery systems
• Experience with lithium-ion spacecraft batteries, battery management systems, cell screening, life testing, and safety controls
• Experience designing DC-DC converters, regulated or unregulated power buses, solid-state power controllers, load switches, or fault-protection circuits
• Experience with analog circuit design, mixed-signal electronics, embedded control, telemetry, or FPGA- and microcontroller-based power hardware
• Familiarity with radiation effects, parts derating, destructive physical analysis, electrical overstress, and space-grade parts selection
• Experience with electromagnetic compatibility, grounding and bonding, conducted susceptibility, conducted emissions, and power integrity
• Experience with SPICE, MATLAB/Simulink, Python, electrical CAD, PCB design tools, requirements-management tools, or equivalent engineering software
• Experience with AS9100, configuration management, nonconformance disposition, root-cause analysis, and aerospace qualification practices
• Experience transitioning power hardware from development into repeatable production
• Experience with national security space, DoD, Space Force, SDA, NASA, or commercial satellite programs
• Active U.S. security clearance
• Master's degree in Electrical Engineering or a related technical discipline

Core Competencies

• Power Systems Engineering
• Battery Design
• Power Electronics
• Hardware Ownership
• Analytical Rigor
• Design for Manufacturing
• Troubleshooting
• Technical Judgment