Staff Electrical Engineer- Testing

Location: This role is based onsite at our office in Pleasanton, CA.
Travel:  Up to 10%, domestic or international.
Job ID:  1780

The Role: 

We are seeking an experienced test engineer to collaborate with our diverse group of physicists, electrical, mechanical, and optical engineers. Vector Atomics has the opportunity to disrupt industries with world-beating sensor performance. Success requires rapid development of specialized, cutting-edge electronics.  To support the development effort, an equally challenging effort is required to rapidly improve our verification procedures and approaches.  

In this critical role, you'll be part of the leadership team defining the direction of our hardware test strategy. The right candidate will be comfortable not only with defining procedures but also with executing them.  They should be able to work effectively in the lab and assist with debugging challenging board-level issues with custom electronics.  They must lead by example and actively engage early-career engineers as mentors. 

Responsibilities:

• Be a team leader for a growing group that is tasked with both testing and debugging complex electronic circuits.  The circuits include a complex mix of FPGAs, MCUs, mixed-signal, precision analog and photonics devices.  
• Collaborate with physicists, electrical, mechanical, software, and optical engineers to develop test procedures to verify electronic designs for next-generation quantum instruments. 
• Collaborate with engineering and manufacturing to define DFT and DFM improvements.
• Create test plans for environmental, EMI and EMC testing.  Oversee and manage execution of these plans at external facilities, when necessary.  They must be able to adjust test protocols as needed to optimize results.   
• Use electronic test and measurement equipment to characterize and verify performance.
• Define equipment and software to create automated data systems for production systems.   

Requirements:

• BSEE/MSEE Degree combined with leadership experience testing precision instruments and/or sensors.   
• Must be comfortable working in a laboratory environment. 
• Ability to communicate effectively with coworkers and collaborators, both written and verbal. Able to create new test plans and procedures for novel instrumentation.   
• Organize and manage test results.  Take ownership of data storage and management systems to ensure valuable test data is retained and properly documented 
• Experience with devising testing protocols for precision instruments.  Including specifying appropriate equipment, writing programs/scripts to automate testing, and finally documenting procedures for the team to use. 
• Must be proficient in post-test data analysis to extract required performance metrics.   
• Experience designing test loads, cabling, and custom equipment to support verification work 
• Able to read schematics, data sheets, and technical information to define expected measurement ranges.   
• Proficiency with laboratory test and measurement equipment such as oscilloscopes, VNA, SA, power supplies, function generators, and DVM. 
• To comply with the US export control laws, Vector Atomic employees must be U.S. citizens (born or naturalized), lawful U.S. permanent residents (i.e. green card holders), and certain categories of refugees, and asylees.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience using PCB Layout tools, particularly Altium 
• Able to write test firmware for embedded MCUs to support testing of MCU-based PCBs. 
• A background with AS9100 compliance would be a plus 
• Experience with environmental testing for space electronics, including radiation effects, is a plus.

The total compensation package includes base, bonus, equity, and a range of benefit options found on our career site.