Senior Electrical Design Engineer

Our mission is to provide real-time on-orbit connectivity for critical missions, enabling a new era of data-driven intelligence and innovation. With 33 satellites launched to date, Kepler operates the first commercial optical data relay constellation, enabling real-time, continuous space communications while supporting advanced on-orbit compute and hosted payload capabilities. 

Key Responsibilities:

• Develop and own hardware solutions to support Kepler’s space technology that requires the utilization of leading technology and practices

• Heavily support design reviews for all active designs to minimize design gaps and drive learnings for younger engineers

• Supporting pathfinding development for future satellite generations that will utilize new technology and interfaces including UFS, 10G+ Ethernet, PCIe 5.0, various other high-speed interfaces, new memory technology, and processors

• Conduct and document engineering analysis including derating, reliability, radiation, EMI/EMC, FMECA, and power budgets 

• Contribute to best practices and development of internal standards 

• Maintain thorough technical documentation that captures design decisions, design specifications, block diagrams, interface requirements, and system architecture reports

• Work closely with other cross-functional engineering teams including RF, mechanical, software, and FPGA to develop full product solutions   

• Develop full product solutions by working closely with other cross-functional engineering teams including RF, mechanical, software, and FPGA

• Drive knowledge-sharing activities to build up the technical knowledge of more junior engineers

Required Skills & Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering or equivalent. 

• 7+ years of hardware design experience (schematic and layout), including a strong background of: 

• Leading development of multi-board systems and handling electrical interface planning and definition 

• Performing schematic design and layout of processors, FPGAs, SoCs, DAC/ADCs or other high speed digital components 

• Familiarity with various memory types and interfaces including QSPI, UFS, DDR3/4, eMMC 

• Design and routing for high-speed interfaces including JESD204B, 10G Ethernet, etc. 

• Clock generation, PLLs, jitter cleaning, clock distribution, and general concepts around timing stability and coherency 

• Experience working in a rapid learning / agile environment that drives early learnings when requirements are not locked down or when attribute development is needed. 

• Demonstrated willingness and ability to leverage AI-assisted engineering and development tools to improve productivity, design quality, and innovation while adapting to evolving technologies and best practices

• Experience leading a project from the architecture stage to the design validation stage. 

• Comfortable in a lab environment and experience using standard tools such as oscilloscopes, spectrum analyzers, multimeters, VNA’s, etc. 

• Strong communication skills and ability to put together thorough design documentation 

Bonus Points:

• Experience designing for space, aerospace or other high-reliability (high-rel) environments
• Experience designing hardware/systems to operate in a radiation environment (LEO)
• Low-level electrical design; high-speed layout
• Experience working with Altium