Senior Power Systems Engineer, Lunar

Vast is looking for a Senior Power Systems Engineer, Lunar, reporting to the Senior Vice President, Lunar Programs, to support the development of the systems that will be required for Vast’s Lunar ecosystem. Our team is applying the technology, infrastructure, and knowledge built across our Haven Demo, Haven-1, Haven Station, and Vast Satellite programs to a new frontier: the Moon. Our Lunar program isn't starting from scratch, giving this founding team an extraordinary running start to help shape humanity's next era of lunar exploration from day one.

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

Responsibilities:

• End-to-end ownership of power system architecture, electronics specification, simulation, schematic capture, PCB design, mechanical packaging design, board-level bring-up and validation, environmental qualification, and integrated system-level validation
• Define and own power architecture tradeoffs for lunar applications - including energy storage integration, solar array interfaces, eclipse and survival-mode power budgets, and fault-tolerant distribution topologies
• Design circuits to implement functions such as power conversion, load switching, hot-swapping, power conditioning, inrush control, over-current fault detection, and more, with margin appropriate to long-duration lunar surface and cislunar operation
• Lead radiation, thermal, and dust-mitigation design considerations for power hardware operating beyond LEO, coordinating part selection, derating, and screening
• Perform failure modes and effects analyses and drive reliability design and validation plans at the system level, including single-point-failure retirement for human-rated applications
• Own qualification campaigns end-to-end, partnering with the test lab across random vibration, shock, thermal cycling, burn-in, TVAC, and radiation testing
• Drive design reviews and present architecture, analysis, and test results to engineering leadership and cross-functional stakeholders at key program milestones
• Mentor junior engineers, review their designs, and help build the power electronics design standards, component libraries, and processes that scale across Vast programs

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering
• 6+ years of experience developing power electronics
• Demonstrated ownership of at least one power electronics product from architecture through hardware bring-up and validation

Preferred Skills & Experience:

• Master's degree in Electrical Engineering with a power electronics emphasis
• Experience designing electronics for the spaceflight environment, verifying workmanship and operability through environmental test (random vibration, shock, thermal, burn-in, and TVAC)
• Experience with hardware intended for beyond-LEO, lunar, planetary, or other high-radiation and extreme-thermal environments, including radiation-tolerant part selection, derating, and screening
• Experience with human-rated or other high-consequence systems where fault tolerance and single-point-failure retirement drive the architecture
• Professional experience with instrumentation and data acquisition
• Experience with software programming: MATLAB, Python, C/C++, etc
• Experience with vehicle and instrumentation buses such as Ethernet, CAN, SPI, and I2C, as well as serial I/O (RS422)
• Experience with full-lifecycle product development, including transition to production and manufacturing support

Additional Requirements:

• Willingness to work evenings and/or weekends to support critical mission milestones
• Ability to travel up to 5% of the time to support customer meetings