Star Catcher Industries, Inc., located in
Jacksonville, Florida, has an opportunity for an
Electrical Engineer - Digital Hardware to support the development of space-to-space power beaming spacecraft and the Star Catcher Network, its orbital power grid.
Key Responsibilities- Execute digital hardware and high-speed PCB designs following the CCA design lifecycle: requirements generation, preliminary design, peer reviews, detailed design, test plan generation, and integration and test.
- Design mixed-signal circuit card assemblies (CCAs) incorporating processors, microcontrollers, FPGA/CPLD, and volatile/non-volatile memory (DDRx, SRAM, ROM, Flash).
- Support FPGA/SoC board layout, backplane interface implementation, and compute module integration, including high-speed memory interfaces (DDRx) and board technologies such as HDI and back-drilled vias.
- Utilize schematic capture, constraint-driven layout, simulation, and timing analysis tools to generate and verify circuit card designs.
- Support timing analysis, SI/PI simulation, and worst-case circuit analysis (WCA) for digital hardware designs, including thermal, EMI/EMC, and component derating considerations.
- Support board bring-up, debug, and signal/power integrity verification alongside embedded software engineers, using lab instrumentation (oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, signal generators, DC power supplies) to troubleshoot at the component and board level.
- Assist with component selection and qualification for digital hardware, including evaluating component tolerances for design margin.
- Work independently to generate digital CCA design solutions.
Basic Qualifications- Education: Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
- Experience: 5+ years of experience in digital hardware design, FPGA-based systems, or high-speed digital PCB design.
- Experience designing with processors, microcontrollers, FPGA/CPLD, and memory devices (DDRx, SRAM, ROM, Flash).
- Familiarity with FPGA/SoC platforms and associated design toolchains.
- Working knowledge of SI/PI simulation and timing analysis tools (e.g., HyperLynx, Ansys, or equivalent).
Desired Skills- Exposure to backplane-based architectures (e.g., VPX, SpaceVPX, CompactPCI Serial, or similar).
- Exposure to radiation-tolerant digital design practices.
- Familiarity with spacecraft data bus standards (e.g., SpaceWire, CCSDS).
- Experience with Altium Designer or equivalent EDA tools.
- Exposure to worst-case circuit analysis (WCA) and part derating practices.
- Experience with high-speed memory interface design (DDRx) and board technologies such as HDI or back drilling.
- Exposure to high-speed digital or optical interfaces and protocols (e.g., Ethernet, PCIe).
- MATLAB, Python, or similar programming experience for analysis or test automation.
Help us deploy and scale space infrastructure that will drive our utilization of space forward! We offer a highly competitive benefits package including access to comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage, 401(k) retirement plan, life insurance, and paid parental leave, in addition to other benefits. 
