Director, Power Electronics and Motor Control

Vast is looking for a Director, Power Electronics and Motor Control, reporting to the Vice President of Avionics, to support the development of the systems that will be required for the design and build of artificial-gravity human-rated space stations.

This role will lead the strategy, development, and execution of power electronics and motor control for the world’s first artificial-gravity, human-rated space stations. This person will provide end-to-end technical leadership, drive organizational excellence, and align cross-functional engineering teams toward mission success.

This will be a full-time, exempt position located in our Long Beach location.

Responsibilities:

• Define the long-term vision and technical roadmap for Power Electronics and Motor Control for Haven-1 and Haven-2.
• Build, mentor, and scale a diverse, high-performing engineering team with a culture of technical excellence, safety, accountability, and innovation.
• Own strategy to ensure on-time and within budget product delivery against internal and external business objectives. Deliver on project timelines from concept through production, launch, and on-orbit operation.
• Technical leadership in architecture, design, development, and validation of power electronics and motor control, including MPPTs, power distribution units, and motor control.
• Tactical planning with avionics partners in manufacturing, test, supply chain, and quality to meet the program needs in terms of process capacity, material readiness, equipment availability, and staffing.
• Champion electrical hardware development: drive excellence in requirements capture, simulation, schematic capture, PCB design, packaging, bring-up testing, and environmental qualification.
• Establish and manage verification and validation milestones across analysis, test, and system integration. Deliver hardware with a test-like-you-fly mentality and a data-driven strategy to verify reliability for a human-rated space station.
• Implement engineering standards, documentation practices, and quality processes to increase reliability and efficiency.
• Initiate R&D objectives and milestones to support Vast’s technology roadmap for Haven-2.
• Lead internal and external design reviews with suppliers, partners, and customers.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering or a related engineering discipline.
• 8+ years of experience technical leadership in avionics hardware and/or power electronics for satellite, spacecraft, or launch vehicle programs.
• 5+ years of engineering leadership leading or managing cross functional teams developing a product with complexity in operations and design.
• Proven experience in design and technical mentorship in analog, digital, and/or mixed-signal circuit design and multi-layer PCB development.

Preferred Experience:

• Demonstrated experience championing a culture of systems engineering, heavily emphasizing verification and validation through analysis and test with a test-like-you-fly mentality.
• Track record of deploying products with successful space flight heritage. In addition, experience managing in-flight anomalies to resolution.
• Experience in space flight operations, ideally supporting vehicle operations plans and procedures for human space flight.
• Experience managing complex technical development projects from requirements through delivery.
• Demonstrated success deploying hardware with spaceflight heritage, including qualification via vibration, shock, thermal, burn-in, and TVAC.
• Experience developing spacecraft power electronics such as, power distribution, DC:DC converter design, and motor control for spaceflight environments.
• Deep understanding of motor control for BLDC applications, appropriate algorithms, and component sizing and selection for optimal control in space environments.
• Experience with electric propulsion (EP) system design and testing for satellites.

Additional Requirements:

• Ability to travel up to 50% of the time
• Willingness to work evenings and/or weekends to support critical mission milestones
• Ability to lift up to 25lbs unassisted
• Specific certifications, as appropriate

Preferred Skills:

• Ability to creatively solve complex multidisciplinary problems and make sound decisions with incomplete information.
• Strong organizational, documentation, written, and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to thrive in an early-stage startup environment and drive creation and optimization of key processes.
• Knowledge of human-rated system requirements and NASA program standards, and familiarity with ISS power compatibility standards.
• Familiarity with design for embedded systems and C/C++ programming. Experience with embedded development tools (debuggers, compilers, IDEs) and version control (Git).
• Knowledge of model based design verification through co-simulation, and Hardware in the Loop test systems for end-to-end verification.
• Proficiency with electrical test equipment (oscilloscopes, multimeters, current probes).
• Fluency with ECAD tools such as Altium.
• Fluency with circuit simulation tools, power electronics and/or motor control simulation strongly preferred (SPICE, LTSpice, SIMetrix/SIMPLIS).
• Strong understanding of electronics manufacturing processes and test strategy development.

Pay Range:

• Director, Power Electronics and Motor Control - $184,900 - $245,100
• Senior Director, Power Electronics and Motor Control - $220,00 - $295,000