Senior Electrical Engineer, Capella Space
$116.5-154.4k
+ Internal team equity
Office located in Louisville, CO
Space-based radar Earth observation satellites
Be an early applicant
Space-based radar Earth observation satellites
201-500 employees
Be an early applicant
$116.5-154.4k
+ Internal team equity
Office located in Louisville, CO
201-500 employees
Company mission
To make timely Earth observation an essential tool for commerce, conservation, and well-being.
Role
Who you are
- 7+ years of experience designing and debugging
- Proficiency in Altium Designer (or similar ECAD tools)
- Hands-on experience with lab instruments (oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, power analyzers, etc.)
- Solid understanding of digital buses (I2C, SPI, UART, RS422, CAN, USB, PCIe, Ethernet etc.)
- Familiarity with board bring-up, test planning, and design verification workflows
- Experience interacting with contract manufacturers, supporting DFM reviews, and resolving production issues
- Strong documentation habits and organizational skills
- U.S. Citizenship or Green Card (required to comply with ITAR regulations)
Desirable
- Experience designing for harsh environments (thermal, vacuum, vibration, etc.)
- Familiarity with high-speed design or impedance-controlled layouts
- Basic scripting or automation in Python or C for hardware test workflows
- Exposure to radiation effects and mitigation in electronic design
- Familiarity with EMI/EMC design practices and validation
- Familiarity with satellite electrical systems engineering (propulsion, (EPS) Electrical Power System, (GNSS) Global Navigation Satellite System, (ADCS) Attitude Determination and Control System, space robotics, etc)
What the job involves
- As a Senior Electrical Hardware Design Engineer, you’ll take ownership of full-cycle PCBA designs—from early concept to flight readiness
- You will work cross-functionally with RF, mechanical, software, and operations teams to bring high-reliability, space-ready electronics to life
- You will present across disciplines to help facilitate ideas, product readiness and conduct reviews
- Drive the full electrical design lifecycle for spaceflight hardware: schematic capture, layout, bring-up, test, and manufacturing handoff
- Develop robust analog/digital designs for mission-critical systems under environmental and performance constraints
- Participate and host collaborative cross disciplinary design reviews sharing feedback and shaping solutions with a team of experienced engineers
- Provide critical input to schedule planning and hardware requirements
- Lead board-level bring-up and debugging, integrating firmware/software with embedded systems
- Define test plans and verification strategies that meet flight readiness requirements
- Play a key role in scaling up our manufacturing facility bringing hardware from prototype to low-volume production
- Collaborate across teams—mechanical, RF, software, and systems—to ensure seamless integration
- Mentor early-career engineers contributing to internal process improvements and elevating the overall quality of the team
- Engage with external vendors and CMs, ensuring delivery quality, resolving DFM/DFT issues, and ensuring on-time delivery
- Contribute to failure analysis and root-cause investigations across flight or test anomalies
- You consistently deliver flight-quality hardware on schedule with minimal oversight
- You proactively identify and articulate system-level risks and drive mitigations early
- You communicate across hardware/software and cross-functional gaps with confidence and clarity
- You make thoughtful trade-offs in constrained environments and justify them with data
- You show curiosity about advanced areas like architecture optimization or radiation mitigation—even if they’re outside your scope for now
Our take
Earth observation in the form of satellite imagery is in high demand. With climate change, supply chain, and defense operations all requiring high-quality observation data, the race is on to provide the clearest, most timely images - and Capella Space is one private company leading the charge.
Capella Space commands a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) constellation in low-earth orbit that clients can use to access real-time visibility of facts on the ground. It’s the first US company to do so, and has won a correspondingly leading slate of customers that include the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office, the U.S. Air Force, Geospatial, and RSI.
As the urgency of addressing global issues increases, the demand for Capella Space’s services is almost certain to rise. This puts the company in a great position to pursue further success, having already established itself as a key player in the market. It has also seen good funding that will help expand its imaging capacity and develop new data products, and has become one of the first commercial earth observation companies to secure a contract to work with the government on its program to boost US resilience in space.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
11% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 6 rounds)
Jan 2023
$60m
GROWTH EQUITY VC
Apr 2022
$97m
SERIES C
Total funding: $234m
Company benefits
- Medical/Dental/Vision
- Disability and Life Insurance
- 401k plan
- Equity
- Health Care, Dependent Care FSAs
- Commuter/Parking Flex Spending
- Flexible Vacation Policy
- In-Office Lunch Program
- Dog Friendly Work Environment (SF)
Company HQ
Mission District, San Francisco, CA
Leadership
Payam Banazadeh
(Board Member & Founder)Worked in software development at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, ultimately taking up a Lead Project Engineer role there. Subsequently worked as a Project Manager at Stanford. Is now a member of advisory committees at the NOAA and University of Texas, Austin, as well as a Board Member at the National Security Space Association (NSSA).
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