Senior Staff Engineer - Electrical

As a key contributor, you'll harness your creativity to develop innovative electronic solutions for groundbreaking quantum instruments, overseeing the entire lifecycle of these circuits, from concept through to implementation. The ideal candidate is an agile engineer who excels in a high-paced environment, readily shifting between intricate design challenges and immediate troubleshooting needs while maintaining the highest standards of quality. Location: This role is based onsite at our office in Pleasanton, CA. Travel: Up to 10%, domestic or international. Requirements What You'll Do • Collaborate with physicists, electrical, mechanical, software, and optical engineers to translate system and schematic requirements into electronic designs for next-generation quantum instruments. • Own the end-to-end development of complex printed circuit boards (PCBs), including gathering requirements, designing schematics and layouts, coordinating fabrication, and verifying design performance. Assist with system integration and testing to ensure instrument specifications are met. • Drive continuous improvement by updating and refining PCB designs, development processes, and engineering procedures. • Support manufacturing operations by troubleshooting customer-reported issues, developing test verification and assembly procedures, and ensuring boards meet yield, quality, and testability targets. • Assist with electronic board bring-up and debugging activities, documenting PCB rework and tracking issues as they arise. • Use electronic test and measurement equipment to characterize and verify board performance. • Maintain accurate and up-to-date design documentation in a cloud-based Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) system, including revisions and Engineering Change Orders (ECOs). What We're Looking For • Ph.D. or Master's degree in Electrical Engineering or a related field with 12+ years of professional experience, or equivalent practical experience. • 8+ years of professional electrical design experience developing complex mixed-signal PCBA designs using professional ECAD tools; experience with Altium Designer is strongly preferred. • Comfortable working in a laboratory environment, including testing and debugging hardware using standard electronic instrumentation. • To comply with the US export control laws, you must be U.S. citizens (born or naturalized), lawful U.S. permanent residents (i.e. green card holders), and certain categories of refugees, and asylees. Required expertise: • Design high-density PCBs with fine-pitch BGAs, high-speed differential pairs, and mixed-signal architectures using modern ECAD tools such as Altium Designer. • Expert understanding of system-level design considerations for programmable devices such as SoCs, FPGAs, and MCUs. • Design precision electronics with tight noise and ripple specifications, making design tradeoffs between competing requirements including size, weight, power, cost (SWaPC), and performance goals. • Define and implement controlled impedance structures (microstrip, stripline, and differential pairs), signal integrity strategies, power distribution networks, grounding schemes, and EMI/EMC-aware layout practices. • Use a PLM system to manage PCBA designs, including creating and managing Engineering Change Orders (ECOs). • Demonstrate strong written and verbal communication skills and the ability to collaborate effectively across engineering teams. Nice-to-have expertise: • Expertise in Altium Designer for tasks including schematic capture, PCB layout, library management, and generating outputs. • Experience in designing and implementing RF circuits on traditional PCBs or ceramic substrates. • Previous work involving the integration of electronics with high-precision photonic components like lasers, AOMs, and photodetectors. • Knowledge of thermal analysis and designing PCBs with thermal considerations (such as heatsinking, copper pours, thermal vias, and component derating). • A foundation in defining, simulating, and verifying ASIC designs would be an additional advantage. • Professional experience in the precision sensor sector, encompassing fields like atomic clocks or INS instrumentation. Benefits Vector Atomic values teamwork, open and honest discourse, and work-life balance. We offer competitive compensation and benefits including: • Platinum-level family health coverage (medical, dental, vision) • Health and dependent care Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA) • Employer 401(k) contributions • 20 days of paid time off / 11 paid holidays • Paid parental leave • Fully stocked kitchen Pay Range The approximate base salary range for this position is $175,000 to $215,000 per year. The total compensation package includes base, bonus, equity and benefits. Please note that it is less common for candidates to be hired at the top of this range, as final compensation is determined by factors such as job-related knowledge, skills, and experience.