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Avionics Mechanical Engineer

Orbital Operations· Orbital Operations - Avionics/Mechanical Integration
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Long Beach, CA$140k - $200kFull-timePosted 2mo ago

About the role

Avionics Integration Engineer responsible for end-to-end electrical integration of spacecraft, harness design, and verification across avionics, propulsion, and supporting systems, contributing to both development and production readiness of Orbital Operations’ Cryogenic Propulsion Management System (CPMS) spacecraft.

Responsibilities

  • Own end-to-end electrical integration across the spacecraft, propulsion system, cryogenic systems, ground-support equipment, and test infrastructure.
  • Serve as the primary avionics interface to propulsion, fluids, structures, mechanisms, thermal, flight software, guidance, navigation and control, manufacturing, and test teams.
  • Gather and maintain vehicle-wide requirements for sensors, actuators, power loads, communications interfaces, instrumentation, and high-speed data acquisition.
  • Develop and maintain channel assignments, pin mappings, network architecture, power budgets, interface-control documentation, and electrical integration requirements.
  • Ensure consistency between electrical schematics, harness drawings, flight-software configuration, telemetry definitions, and installed flight hardware.
  • Lead electrical interface definition and verification for valves, pressure and temperature sensors, ignition systems, pumps, motors, heaters, controllers, and other spacecraft hardware.
  • Identify integration risks early and drive technical issues to closure across multiple engineering disciplines.
  • Own electrical harnessing from system architecture through schematic development, routing, formboard creation, manufacturing, inspection, installation, and acceptance testing.
  • Design flight and test harnesses for power distribution, Ethernet, CAN, serial communications, discrete signals, analog instrumentation, and other spacecraft interfaces.
  • Select and qualify connectors, wire, cable, backshells, shielding, grounding, sleeving, strain relief, and environmental-protection solutions.
  • Perform trade studies to optimize harness designs for reliability, signal integrity, electromagnetic compatibility, mass, manufacturability, maintainability, and cost.
  • Collaborate with mechanical engineers to establish harness routing, mounting, bend-radius, separation, access, thermal, and service-loop requirements.
  • Develop and maintain electrical schematics, connection diagrams, harness drawings, bills of material, formboards, and installation documentation.
  • Create release, inspection, and configuration-control processes for schematics, harness drawings, formboards, and completed assemblies.
  • Develop and execute avionics integration and verification campaigns at the component, subsystem, vehicle, and mission levels.
  • Create test plans, procedures, automated scripts, data-review tools, and pass/fail criteria for electrical and avionics testing.
  • Support hardware-in-the-loop testing, propulsion-system testing, cryogenic testing, vehicle checkout, launch-site operations, and mission readiness reviews.
  • Develop automated tools, primarily in Python, for commanding hardware, analyzing telemetry, validating channel mappings, and identifying anomalous system behavior.
  • Troubleshoot electrical, communications, software, and instrumentation issues during vehicle manufacturing and test.
  • Review test and flight data to verify performance, investigate anomalies, and recommend corrective actions.
  • Establish electrical checkouts and regression tests that identify workmanship, configuration, and interface issues before higher-level integration.
  • Own or support vehicle off-nominal alerts, limits, telemetry displays, and electrical launch-commit criteria.
  • Help establish the standards, tools, documentation, and technical-review processes for a growing avionics organization.
  • Participate in recruiting and interviewing avionics engineers, PCB designers, electromechanical engineers, manufacturing engineers, and harness technicians.
  • Create training materials and component libraries for electrical schematic, harness-design, and configuration-management tools.
  • Mentor engineers and technicians in electrical design, integration, troubleshooting, and test.
  • Communicate system status, technical risks, and resource requirements clearly to engineering and company leadership.

Qualifications

  • Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, aerospace engineering, computer engineering, mechanical engineering, or related technical field.
  • 3+ years of professional experience with avionics, electrical systems, vehicle integration, harnessing, instrumentation, or complex electromechanical systems.
  • Experience designing, building, integrating, or testing electrical harnesses and avionics hardware.
  • Experience reading and creating electrical schematics, wiring diagrams, pinout documentation, and interface-control documents.
  • Working knowledge of electrical power distribution, grounding, shielding, signal integrity, and electromagnetic compatibility.
  • Experience troubleshooting electrical hardware using oscilloscopes, digital multimeters, logic analyzers, network tools, and other laboratory equipment.
  • Experience using scripting or programming tools, preferably Python, to automate testing or analyze engineering data.
  • Ability to work directly with flight or test hardware in a fast-moving development environment.
  • Ability to communicate effectively across electrical, mechanical, software, manufacturing, propulsion, and test teams.

Skills

Required:Electrical integrationHarness design and wiringSchematic and documentationPython scripting for automation
Last updated Sep 30, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.
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About Orbital Operations

High Thrust Space Vehicles for Satellite Defense

Orbital Operations is developing a high thrust, reusable space vehicle for satellite defense. We protect critical satellites, like GPS and Military communication satellites, from adversarial threats, like China and Russia. Our vehicle will use the exact same propulsion systems that launch vehicles have used for decades by implementing a cryogenic management system. This will give us over 100x the thrust or current in-space propulsion. Ross and I have over 15 years of combined aerospace experience across NASA, Aerojet Rocketdyne, SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Relativity Space. We’ve worked side by side for more than 3.5 years developing propulsion systems, turbomachinery, and building our own respective engineering teams. We are currently working on the first demo of our unique cryo management system and intend to launch an operational vehicle by 2027.

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