Senior Autonomous Flight Termination System Hardware Engineer at Castelion in Torrance, CA; Rio Rancho, NM

Job description

• Senior Autonomous Flight Termination System Hardware Engineer
• We are seeking a Senior Autonomous Flight Termination System (AFTS) Hardware Engineer to design and deliver high-reliability flight safety electronics for Castelion's long-range hypersonic strike vehicles. This role is critical to ensuring safe, deterministic vehicle termination through robust, fault-tolerant hardware. You will work hands-on with multidisciplinary engineering teams to design, build, test, and validate pulsed power electronics and firing systems, with a focus on electronic safe and arm devices (ESADs) and related architectures in a fast-paced, hardware-driven environment.

Responsibilities

• Design and develop pulsed power electronics for flight termination and firing systems, including high-voltage energy storage, switching, and delivery circuits
• Lead the architecture and implementation of electronic safe and arm devices (ESADs) and related safety-critical hardware
• Develop robust initiation and firing circuits, ensuring deterministic performance, redundancy, and fault tolerance
• Work closely with avionics, GNC, flight software, and systems engineering teams to ensure seamless integration of AFTS hardware with vehicle systems
• Perform circuit-level and system-level modeling and analysis to validate performance, timing, and reliability under dynamic flight conditions
• Define and execute qualification, environmental, and flight test plans, translating results into system-level improvements
• Support hardware bring-up, integration, and test campaigns, including debugging, failure analysis, and root cause investigation
• Ensure compliance with safety, range, and mission assurance requirements for flight termination systems
• Mentor junior engineers and contribute to best practices in high-reliability pulsed power and safety-critical electronics design
• Partner closely with program leadership to make technical trades aligned with mission success

Requirements

• Bachelor's, Master's, or PhD in Electrical Engineering or related field
• 5+ years of experience designing and validating pulsed power, high-voltage, or firing system electronics for aerospace, defense, or similar high-reliability applications
• Strong background in energy storage, high-speed/high-current switching, and pulsed power circuit design
• Experience with electronic safe and arm devices (ESADs), initiation systems, or similar safety-critical hardware
• Proficiency in circuit design, simulation, and analysis tools (e.g., SPICE, MATLAB/Simulink, or equivalent)
• Experience with hardware bring-up, environmental testing, and troubleshooting in a lab or flight hardware environment
• Familiarity with system safety, redundancy, and fault-tolerant design principles for mission-critical systems
• Experience designing for EMI/EMC, thermal performance, and operation in extreme environments
• Strong problem-solving mindset, thriving in a fast-paced, hardware-rich, high flight cadence environment
• This position may require access to classified information or restricted U.S. Government sites, systems, or information, as determined by the Company and/or applicable U.S. Government requirements. If the position is so designated, your employment in the role may be contingent upon your ability to obtain and maintain the required U.S. Government security clearance or other government authorization, and to satisfy any citizenship or other eligibility requirements imposed by applicable law, regulation, executive order, or government contract requirements. You will be notified if and when such requirements apply.
• This position requires access to export-controlled information, and as such, employment (or hiring of a contractor) is contingent upon the candidate’s ability to access all applicable export-controlled information without additional export licensing being required by the Bureau of Industry and Security and/or the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls.

Skills

Required

• pulsed power electronics design
• high-voltage energy storage
• high-speed/high-current switching
• electronic safe and arm devices (ESADs)
• initiation systems
• circuit design
• hardware bring-up
• environmental testing
• troubleshooting
• system safety
• redundancy
• fault-tolerant design

Benefits

• Castelion offers a generous benefits package. Please refer to the bottom of our Careers page for more details.