What are the responsibilities and job description for the Electrical Engineer position at Metrea?
Company Overview
Metrea is a defense company dedicated to translating commercial innovation into solutions for the hardest problems in national security. With deep mission expertise, Metrea focuses on delivering effects-as-a-service across Aerospace, Electromagnetic & Cyber, Digital & Synthetic domains via its capability groups. Metrea also consists of six support groups (Operations, People, Finance, Legal, Strategy and Solutions) that guide the development of specific capabilities that Metrea's files (product, projects, programs etc) leverage to achieve their targets.
Electromagnetic and Cyber Group (EM&C) is responsible for developing flexible and survivable advanced electronic warfare and secure communications equipment while providing the industry’s leading signals intelligence, electronic warfare, and cyber experts. Metrea specializes in signal classification, direction finding, advanced geolocation techniques, and waveform development including waveforms for MANET and LPI/LPD applications. Metrea also develops special purpose radios for government customers and licenses DF and geolocation solutions to multiple OEMs.
Position Summary
Reporting to the SHADOWLAB Lead Engineer, Electromagnetics and Cyber Group (EM&C), and supporting Metrea’s overall engineering efforts, the Electrical Engineer will join our busy team specializing in state-of-the-art military communications and signals intelligence products. All our teams operate in a small agile environment which allows our engineering personnel to work independently on a wide variety of systems and products. Our mix of product development and R&D also provides our engineering staff with a constant flow of new and interesting projects.
Role And Responsibilities
Metrea’s single core value, “rooted in humility,” is supported by four key attributes: entrepreneurial, systematic, discerning, and over-deliver. These attributes, combined, form our Teammate Firmware, our culture. We explore these attributes during the hiring process when we grow our teams and continually support the growth of our culture. We are a hyper-collaborative, dynamically hierarchical organization united by a passion for what we do, how we do it, who we do it with, and who we do it for.
Work Authorization / Security Clearance
Employee must be a US citizen.
AAP/EEO Statement
Metrea Algorithmics (MAX) is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Employment decisions are made without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status or other characteristics protected by law.
Position Type and Expected Hours of Work
This is a fulltime position with typical working hours Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Hours and work shifts may change in accordance with department and business needs. Exempt Employees must have the ability to be on-call and available, as business needs require.
Work Location
Huntsville, AL
Work Environment
This job operates in a clerical office and laboratory setting.
Travel
Up to 10% travel is expected for this role.
Metrea is a defense company dedicated to translating commercial innovation into solutions for the hardest problems in national security. With deep mission expertise, Metrea focuses on delivering effects-as-a-service across Aerospace, Electromagnetic & Cyber, Digital & Synthetic domains via its capability groups. Metrea also consists of six support groups (Operations, People, Finance, Legal, Strategy and Solutions) that guide the development of specific capabilities that Metrea's files (product, projects, programs etc) leverage to achieve their targets.
Electromagnetic and Cyber Group (EM&C) is responsible for developing flexible and survivable advanced electronic warfare and secure communications equipment while providing the industry’s leading signals intelligence, electronic warfare, and cyber experts. Metrea specializes in signal classification, direction finding, advanced geolocation techniques, and waveform development including waveforms for MANET and LPI/LPD applications. Metrea also develops special purpose radios for government customers and licenses DF and geolocation solutions to multiple OEMs.
Position Summary
Reporting to the SHADOWLAB Lead Engineer, Electromagnetics and Cyber Group (EM&C), and supporting Metrea’s overall engineering efforts, the Electrical Engineer will join our busy team specializing in state-of-the-art military communications and signals intelligence products. All our teams operate in a small agile environment which allows our engineering personnel to work independently on a wide variety of systems and products. Our mix of product development and R&D also provides our engineering staff with a constant flow of new and interesting projects.
Role And Responsibilities
- Power architecture : size the battery (chemistry/cell count), design PDBs/DC-DC rails, transient/EMI filtering, pre-charge/soft-start, redundancy/fail-over, and power-up sequencing for flight computers, ESCs, RF payloads, and gimbal.
- Propulsion & motor-control : select/qualify brushed/BLDC motors and ESCs, set Kv/torque/prop matches, implement/tune FOC/DShot/CAN ESC parameters, and run thrust-stand and efficiency testing.
- Gimbal & antenna tracking electronics : design the 2–3-axis gimbal drivers (sine/FOC commutation), choose and interface encoders (absolute/incremental), implement tight PID/LQR loops, manage cable wrap/slip ring, and verify pointing accuracy vs. link budget needs.
- Battery charging & capacity gauging : design fast-charge/balance systems (CC/CV), select/implement fuel-gauge/BMS ICs, SOC/SOH estimation, safety interlocks, thermal monitoring, and charger/ground-support hardware.
- Embedded interfaces & integration : define and bring-up SPI/I²C/UART/CAN/UAVCAN/RS-485/Ethernet links among sensors, ESCs, BMS, gimbal, and the compute stack (e.g., Jetson Orin); ensure determinism/latency budgets for closed-loop control.
- Verification, compliance, and DFM/DFT : build HIL rigs (motor dyno/gimbal stim), write test plans, run thermal/vibe/EMI pre-compliance (e.g., DO-160/MIL-STD-810 sections), create manufacturing test fixtures, FMEAs, and release documentation (schematics, BOM, ICDs).
- Power electronics & protection : DC-DC (buck/boost/SEPIC), gate-driver/MOSFET selection, current/voltage sensing (shunt/Hall), surge/TVS design, grounding/shielding, and thermal design for 6S–14S Li-ion/LiPo systems.
- Motion control theory & tuning : PID/LQR/state observers, FOC for BLDC/gimbal motors, jerk-limited trajectories, anti-windup, notch filters, and frequency-response tuning (Bode/Nyquist).
- Motors, ESCs & protocols : brushed/BLDC sizing, torque/Kv trade-offs, ESC protocols (PWM/OneShot/DShot/CAN/UAVCAN), gimbal drivers (sinusoidal/FOC), and encoder technologies (magnetic/optical, absolute/incremental).
- Batteries & charging : Li-ion/LiPo characteristics, cell balancing (passive/active), SOC/SOH (coulomb counting Kalman), pack safety (fault detection, contactors, fusing), and charger design/integration.
- Sensing & RF-aware integration : IMU/gyro/magnetometer/GNSS/RTK bring-up and calibration, time sync (PPS/PTP), low-noise analog design near RF payloads, and EMI/EMC mitigation so tracking electronics don’t pollute the antenna front-end.
- Tools & workflows : PCB design (Altium), simulation (LTspice, MATLAB/Simulink), embedded C/C & Python for test, ROS2/PX4 integration, hardware bring-up with scopes/logic analyzers/JTAG, and strong DFM/DFT practices
Metrea’s single core value, “rooted in humility,” is supported by four key attributes: entrepreneurial, systematic, discerning, and over-deliver. These attributes, combined, form our Teammate Firmware, our culture. We explore these attributes during the hiring process when we grow our teams and continually support the growth of our culture. We are a hyper-collaborative, dynamically hierarchical organization united by a passion for what we do, how we do it, who we do it with, and who we do it for.
Work Authorization / Security Clearance
Employee must be a US citizen.
AAP/EEO Statement
Metrea Algorithmics (MAX) is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Employment decisions are made without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status or other characteristics protected by law.
Position Type and Expected Hours of Work
This is a fulltime position with typical working hours Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Hours and work shifts may change in accordance with department and business needs. Exempt Employees must have the ability to be on-call and available, as business needs require.
Work Location
Huntsville, AL
Work Environment
This job operates in a clerical office and laboratory setting.
Travel
Up to 10% travel is expected for this role.