iLocatum

Los Angeles, California, California Job ID: e0e7d6b7-025d-49ca-be84-9125fb74c71d-OOJ - 49069

Electrical Engineer - Circuit Design and Power Electronics (Defense Startup)

Electrical Engineer, Power Electronics for Defense Avionics

Location: Los Angeles, CA (100% on-site)
Job Type: Full-time
Travel: Monthly weekend travel for test events and supplier visits
Pay: $150,000 to $220,000 per year, plus early-employee equity

Own the power and actuator drive electronics that fly on a venture-backed defense startup’s vehicles, with hardware flying every couple of weeks.

Must-Haves

  • 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 with a system-level EMC approach to grounding, shielding, filtering, and power integrity
  • Hands-on lab experience debugging hardware and bringing up boards
  • Proven ability to take designs from schematic through layout, integration, and test
  • Experience in a fast-paced, 0-to-1 development environment
  • Daily use of AI tools such as Claude or Cursor in your workflow
  • BS in Electrical Engineering or related field
  • U.S. Citizen or Green Card holder (no visa sponsorship)

What You’ll Do

  • Design power distribution and conversion, including battery management, regulation, and protection circuits
  • Own actuator drive electronics, including power stage, current sensing, motor commutation, and position interfaces
  • Create schematics, PCB layouts, and bring-up procedures for analog and digital avionics
  • Lead EMI/EMC design and validation
  • Integrate and tune hardware with embedded software, systems, and controls engineers
  • Build test infrastructure and support debugging, integration, and environmental testing
  • Help define scalable electrical architecture for high-rate manufacturing

Nice-to-Haves

  • BLDC/PMSM motor drive design, gate drivers, and current sensing topologies
  • FPGA interface experience
  • DO-160 or similar environmental qualification
  • Defense, racing, robotics, EV, or high-performance mobility background
  • Altium or KiCad and SPICE experience

Compensation and Benefits

  • $150,000 to $220,000 base salary
  • Meaningful early-employee equity

About the Company
Our client is a well-funded, venture-backed defense technology startup building high-performance flight hardware for national security.

To apply, submit your resume for consideration.

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