Principal Electrical Design Engineer - Compute

Position Title: Principal Electrical Design Engineer - Compute
Requisition ID: 1868
Position Location: Sterling, VA
Position Reports To: Director of Electrical Engineering
Supervises Others: No

At Trident Systems, we believe that strong engineering principles are fundamental to driving innovation and solving complex problems. We promote a culture characterized by rigorous engineering practices and a commitment to continuous improvement. This is achieved by leveraging our organization's collective expertise through collaborative development processes, which include thorough design and peer reviews. We can deliver innovative, high-performance solutions that meet our customers' evolving requirements by integrating our specialized knowledge in aerospace electronic systems with appropriately scaled development methodologies.

We are a mission partner supporting DoD, Intelligence Community, and Civil space customers. We develop complex, radiation effects mitigated, designs that balance competing requirements in modern space programs, delivering cutting-edge solutions that enable our customers to achieve more in space.

Position Summary

The Principal Electrical Design Engineer - Compute is responsible for the architecture, design, analysis, development, and verification of advanced aerospace computing electronics. This role supports new product development and evolution of Trident's space computing product line, including flight computers, processor and FPGA-based electronics, daughter cards, interface electronics, and supporting circuitry.

The Principal Electrical Design Engineer serves as a senior technical contributor throughout the hardware development lifecycle, from architecture and component selection through schematic design, analysis, PCB layout oversight, prototype bring-up, qualification, and production transition.

The ideal candidate has deep hands-on electrical design experience and is comfortable independently solving complex board-level problems involving high-speed digital interfaces, power, signal integrity, radiation environments, and aerospace reliability requirements.

 Duties and Responsibilities

• Architect and design new aerospace computing electronics, including processor-based systems, FPGA-based systems, daughter cards, interface electronics, and supporting circuitry.
• Develop electrical architectures, schematics, component selections, interface definitions, and detailed board-level designs.
• Perform or lead electrical analyses including worst-case circuit analysis (WCCA), component derating, power analysis, timing analysis, signal integrity (SI), and power integrity (PI).
• Design and analyze high-speed digital interfaces such as DDR memory, PCIe, Ethernet, LVDS, and other high-speed serial and parallel interfaces.
• Design supporting analog and mixed-signal circuitry including power conversion, sequencing, monitoring, reset, clocking, sensor, and interface circuits.
• Develop radiation-effects-mitigation approaches appropriate for space electronics, including component selection, circuit-level mitigation, fault tolerance, and analysis of radiation-induced failure modes.
• Support radiation-effects analysis and testing, including consideration of total ionizing dose (TID), single-event effects (SEE), and other applicable space-environment effects.
• Select electrical components based on performance, reliability, radiation tolerance, lifecycle, availability, manufacturability, and program requirements.
• Develop and maintain component derating, parts analysis, and engineering documentation supporting flight hardware designs.
• Provide technical direction and oversight for PCB layout, including high-speed routing, controlled impedance, differential pairs, memory interfaces, power distribution, grounding, stack-up, and EMI/EMC considerations.
• Perform design trade studies balancing performance, SWaP-C, reliability, radiation tolerance, schedule, manufacturability, and lifecycle considerations.
• Lead and participate in schematic reviews, peer reviews, design reviews, and technical trade studies.
• Support prototype hardware bring-up, board-level debug, characterization, integration, and verification using laboratory instrumentation.
• Troubleshoot complex electrical issues involving processors, FPGAs, memory, power systems, high-speed interfaces, clocks, communication interfaces, and board-level circuitry.
• Develop hardware verification strategies and support development of engineering test plans, procedures, and acceptance criteria.
• Support environmental and qualification testing including thermal, thermal-vacuum, vibration, EMI/EMC, and radiation testing, as applicable.
• Investigate hardware failures and anomalies through structured root-cause analysis and recommend corrective actions.
• Work closely with FPGA, embedded software, mechanical, integration and test, GSE, manufacturing, quality, and program personnel throughout product development.
• Support transition of new designs from engineering development into repeatable production.
• Mentor junior electrical engineers and provide technical guidance on design practices, analysis, troubleshooting, and hardware development.
• Support customer technical discussions and design reviews as a subject matter expert for electrical hardware.
• Perform other duties as assigned.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a closely related engineering discipline.
• 8Minimum of 9 years of experience designing complex electrical or electronic hardware.
• Demonstrated ownership of board-level electrical designs from concept and architecture through schematic capture, layout, fabrication, bring-up, and verification.
• Strong experience with digital circuit design involving processors, microcontrollers, FPGAs, memory, or similar complex devices.
• Experience designing high-speed digital interfaces such as DDR, PCIe, Ethernet, LVDS, or comparable interfaces.
• Experience performing or interpreting signal-integrity and power-integrity analyses.
• Experience with electrical design analysis including worst-case analysis, component derating, tolerance analysis, power analysis, or similar design-verification methods.
• Experience with power architecture, power sequencing, DC/DC conversion, point-of-load regulation, and power-distribution considerations for complex digital electronics.
• Proficiency with electrical schematic capture and PCB design tools such as Altium Designer, Cadence/OrCAD, Siemens/Mentor, or equivalent.
• Hands-on experience with hardware bring-up and troubleshooting using oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, DMMs, power supplies, protocol analyzers, and other laboratory equipment.
• Ability to independently evaluate complex technical problems, develop engineering solutions, and communicate technical rationale through analysis and design documentation.
• Ability to lead technical design reviews and provide technical guidance to other engineers.
• Strong written and verbal technical communication skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience designing electronics for spacecraft, launch vehicles, missiles, defense systems, avionics, or other high-reliability applications.
• Experience designing radiation-tolerant or radiation-effects-mitigated electronics for space environments.
• Familiarity with radiation effects including TID, SEE, SEU, SET, SEL, and mitigation approaches at the component, circuit, and system levels.
• Experience with radiation testing, radiation-effects analysis, or selection and qualification of components for radiation environments.
• Experience with high-performance embedded processors, FPGAs, SoCs, or heterogeneous computing architectures.
• Experience designing DDR3/DDR4/DDR5 memory interfaces, PCIe, Gigabit Ethernet, high-speed serial transceivers, SpaceWire, CAN, RS-422/485, or similar interfaces.
• Experience with SI/PI simulation tools such as HyperLynx, Cadence Sigrity, Ansys SIwave, Keysight ADS or equivalent.
• Experience developing or reviewing PCB stack-ups, impedance requirements, routing constraints, and layout guidelines for high-speed electronics.
• Experience with EMI/EMC design practices, grounding, shielding, filtering, and noise mitigation.
• Experience with aerospace electrical design standards, parts control, component derating, reliability analysis, and high-reliability manufacturing practices.
• Familiarity with environmental qualification standards and test methods applicable to aerospace electronics.
• Experience supporting qualification, acceptance, and production testing of flight electronics.
• Experience with VPX, SpaceVPX, VITA standards, or other modular embedded computing architectures.
• Experience with schematic and PCB design for compact, high-density, SWaP-constrained electronics.
• Familiarity with FPGA and embedded software development sufficient to collaborate effectively across hardware, firmware, and software disciplines.
• Experience supporting technical proposals, customer design reviews, or new product development programs.

Pay Information

Full-Time Salary Range: $114,000 - $211,000
Please Note: Actual compensation offered will be determined based on several factors including, but not limited to, relevant experience, skills, education, certifications, internal equity, business considerations, and geographic location where applicable.

Benefits 

Hired applicants may be eligible for benefits including but not limited to:

• Health benefits
  • Medical 
  • Dental 
  • Vision
  • Basic life with AD&D
  • Short-term disability
  • Long term disability
  • Ancillary (Voluntary life with AD&D, accident, critical illness, hospital, and pet)
  • Spending accounts (HSA, FSA, and DCFSA)
• Paid time off
• Holidays
• 401(k) (including company match)
• Tuition reimbursement
• Leaves (Parental, maternity, and military)
• Annual discretionary bonus (for eligible roles)

Trident Systems reserves the right to change or assign other duties to this position. 

Trident Systems is an affirmative action and equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws. To request reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, please contact [email protected].

Pay Transparency: The contractor will not discharge or in any other manner discriminate against employees or applicants because they have inquired about, discussed, or disclosed their own pay or the pay of another employee or applicant. However, employees who have access to the compensation information of other employees or applicants as a part of their essential job functions cannot disclose the pay of other employees or applicants to individuals who do not otherwise have access to compensation information, unless the disclosure is (a) in response to a formal complaint or charge, (b) in furtherance of an investigation, proceeding, hearing, or action, including an investigation conducted by the employer, or (c) consistent with the contractor’s legal duty to furnish information. 41 CFR 60-1.35(c)