Electrical Engineer, Circuit Design & Power Electronics
The Opportunity
StaffRight Associates is recruiting for an Electrical Engineer, Circuit Design & Power Electronics to join a fast-moving, venture-backed defense technology startup building high-performance flight hardware. The Electrical Engineer, Circuit Design & Power Electronics will own the power and actuator drive electronics that fly on the company's vehicles. Because avionics sits on the critical path for every flight test, your pace directly drives the program.
This is a ground-floor role at a well-funded startup tackling a real national security challenge. Your hardware flies every couple of weeks, engineers own design, build, and test end to end with minimal bureaucracy, and the team is scaling quickly with significant hiring planned over the next 6 to 12 months. This is a full-time, 100% on-site position in Los Angeles, California (no remote option), with monthly weekend travel for test events and supplier visits.
What You'll Do
- Architect power distribution and conversion systems, including battery management, power regulation, and protection circuits.
- Own actuator drive electronics for the fin control actuation system: power stage, current sensing, motor commutation, position-interface front end, and motor-bus partitioning.
- Produce schematics, PCB layouts, and bring-up procedures for mission-critical analog and digital avionics.
- Lead EMI/EMC design and validation, covering power integrity, grounding, and mitigation strategies.
- Collaborate with embedded software, systems, and controls engineers to integrate and tune hardware on the bench.
- Build test infrastructure and validation procedures, and drive debugging, integration, and environmental testing.
- Shape scalable electrical architecture standards for high-rate manufacturing.
What You Bring
Required
- 5+ years in Circuit Design and Power Electronics
- Power Systems experience in demanding hardware environments such as aerospace, defense, automotive, or robotics
- Strong PCB Design and layout skills with a system-level EMC approach (grounding, shielding, filtering, Signal Integrity, and Power Integrity)
- Hands-on lab experience with Hardware Debugging and Board Bring-Up
- Proven ability to carry designs from schematic to layout to integration and test
- Experience in fast-paced, 0-To-1 Product Development environments
- Daily use of AI Tools (such as Claude or Cursor) in your engineering workflow
- Familiarity with the team's toolset: Altium/KiCad, Schematic Capture, SPICE, BMS, EMI/EMC Testing, oscilloscopes and lab equipment
- Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering or a related field
- (no visa sponsorship)
- Ability to work fully on-site in Los Angeles, plus monthly weekend travel
Preferred
- Motor drive design (BLDC/PMSM power stages, gate driver selection, current sensing topologies, EMI mitigation on high-current buses)
- FPGA interface and embedded systems experience
- Qualifying hardware to DO-160 or similar environmental standards
- Background in defense, automotive or racing, robotics, EV, or high-performance mobility
Compensation & Total Rewards
- Salary: $150,000 - $220,000
- Equity: meaningful early-employee equity
- Engagement: Full-time, direct hire; 100% on-site, Los Angeles, CA, with monthly weekend travel
Joining StaffRight Associates
When you partner with StaffRight Associates in your search for your next role, you're doing more than pursuing a job, you're aligning yourself with a team of experts committed to placing top-tier talent in truly impactful positions. We take pride in fostering professional growth and connecting forward-thinking individuals with organizations that value innovation and excellence. We look forward to showcasing your expertise in a way that resonates with our clients and opens the door to meaningful opportunities.
