What are the responsibilities and job description for the Avionics Engineer position at Hernshead Recruitment?
About this Position: This is a hands-on Avionics Engineer role within a fast-moving, venture-backed aerospace company developing the world's smallest and fastest heavy-lift micro-turbine VTOL aircraft. The position sits within the core engineering team and spans the full hardware lifecycle, from circuit design and firmware development through to physical assembly and live flight testing. It is a broad, ownership-driven role suited to someone who thrives in a prototype-culture environment where speed, initiative, and technical versatility are valued over process and hierarchy.
Job Responsibilities:
- Design flight-critical PCBAs, harnesses, and associated firmware
- Develop fabrication and assembly drawings for PCBAs and harnesses
- Write test procedures for design validation, bring-up, and acceptance testing
- Develop firmware and detailed ICDs for self-designed boards
- Support aircraft assembly and integration, including derating analyses and power budgets
- Perform hands-on fabrication and assembly work on the aircraft
- Support testing of COTS hardware including motors, engines, and thermal systems
- Travel to test ranges and support the end-to-end flight test effort
Experience Required:
- Bachelor's degree or higher in Electrical, Computer, Robotics, Aerospace Engineering, or related field, with 5 years of relevant experience
- Experience with EDA software such as Altium Designer, Allegro, or equivalent
- Experience with circuit simulation and analysis, including SPICE and hand calculations
- Hands-on experience building electrical assemblies including soldering, crimping, splicing, and PCBA coating
- Experience writing firmware for flight or development hardware in Embedded C or Python
- Experience with hardware test at component, assembly, or system level, including test plans and data review
- US citizen or permanent resident (export control compliance required)
Nice to Have
- Master's degree in Electrical or Computer Engineering (desirable)
- Experience with harness design tools such as RapidHarness or Zuken (desirable)
- HDL knowledge for FPGAs, Verilog or VHDL (desirable)
- Experience with RF systems and/or EMI/EMC compliance design and testing (desirable)
- Experience with qualification testing of avionics hardware in flight-critical systems (desirable)
Salary : $150,000 - $160,000