{"id":1884426,"url":"https://alion.io/job/trident-systems-principal-electrical-design-engineer-compute","title":"Principal Electrical Design Engineer - Compute","company":{"id":2311281,"name":"Trident Systems","domain":"tridsys.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/tridsys","size_band":"501-1000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"ADP","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":88,"open_postings":3,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.667,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":20,"computed_at":"2026-10-10T05:45:15Z"}},"role":"Hardware","role_family":"Hardware","seniority":"lead","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Sterling, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":114000,"max":211000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":211000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":9,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Altium Designer","optional":false},{"name":"OrCAD","optional":false},{"name":"Ansys SIwave","optional":true},{"name":"Cadence Sigrity","optional":true},{"name":"HyperLynx","optional":true},{"name":"Keysight ADS","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-09-04T21:03:00Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-09-04","last_verified_at":"2026-10-12T02:00:23Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":37,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":37},"description":"Position Title: Principal Electrical Design Engineer - Compute\nRequisition ID: 1868\nPosition Location: Sterling, VA\nPosition Reports To: Director of Electrical Engineering\nSupervises Others: No\nAt Trident Systems, we believe that strong engineering principles are fundamental to driving innovation and solving complex problems. We promote a culture characterized by rigorous engineering practices and a commitment to continuous improvement. This is achieved by leveraging our organization's collective expertise through collaborative development processes, which include thorough design and peer reviews. We can deliver innovative, high-performance solutions that meet our customers' evolving requirements by integrating our specialized knowledge in aerospace electronic systems with appropriately scaled development methodologies.\nWe are a mission partner supporting DoD, Intelligence Community, and Civil space customers. We develop complex, radiation effects mitigated, designs that balance competing requirements in modern space programs, delivering cutting-edge solutions that enable our customers to achieve more in space.\nPosition Summary\nThe Principal Electrical Design Engineer - Compute is responsible for the architecture, design, analysis, development, and verification of advanced aerospace computing electronics. This role supports new product development and evolution of Trident's space computing product line, including flight computers, processor and FPGA-based electronics, daughter cards, interface electronics, and supporting circuitry.\nThe Principal Electrical Design Engineer serves as a senior technical contributor throughout the hardware development lifecycle, from architecture and component selection through schematic design, analysis, PCB layout oversight, prototype bring-up, qualification, and production transition.\nThe ideal candidate has deep hands-on electrical design experience and is comfortable independently solving complex board-level problems involving high-speed digital interfaces, power, signal integrity, radiation environments, and aerospace reliability requirements.\n Duties and Responsibilities\nArchitect and design new aerospace computing electronics, including processor-based systems, FPGA-based systems, daughter cards, interface electronics, and supporting circuitry.\nDevelop electrical architectures, schematics, component selections, interface definitions, and detailed board-level designs.\nPerform or lead electrical analyses including worst-case circuit analysis (WCCA), component derating, power analysis, timing analysis, signal integrity (SI), and power integrity (PI).\nDesign and analyze high-speed digital interfaces such as DDR memory, PCIe, Ethernet, LVDS, and other high-speed serial and parallel interfaces.\nDesign supporting analog and mixed-signal circuitry including power conversion, sequencing, monitoring, reset, clocking, sensor, and interface circuits.\nDevelop radiation-effects-mitigation approaches appropriate for space electronics, including component selection, circuit-level mitigation, fault tolerance, and analysis of radiation-induced failure modes.\nSupport radiation-effects analysis and testing, including consideration of total ionizing dose (TID), single-event effects (SEE), and other applicable space-environment effects.\nSelect electrical components based on performance, reliability, radiation tolerance, lifecycle, availability, manufacturability, and program requirements.\nDevelop and maintain component derating, parts analysis, and engineering documentation supporting flight hardware designs.\nProvide technical direction and oversight for PCB layout, including high-speed routing, controlled impedance, differential pairs, memory interfaces, power distribution, grounding, stack-up, and EMI/EMC considerations.\nPerform design trade studies balancing performance, SWaP-C, reliability, radiation tolerance, schedule, manufacturability, and lifecycle considerations.\nLead and participate in schematic reviews, peer reviews, design reviews, and technical trade studies.\nSupport prototype hardware bring-up, board-level debug, characterization, integration, and verification using laboratory instrumentation.\nTroubleshoot complex electrical issues involving processors, FPGAs, memory, power systems, high-speed interfaces, clocks, communication interfaces, and board-level circuitry.\nDevelop hardware verification strategies and support development of engineering test plans, procedures, and acceptance criteria.\nSupport environmental and qualification testing including thermal, thermal-vacuum, vibration, EMI/EMC, and radiation testing, as applicable.\nInvestigate hardware failures and anomalies through structured root-cause analysis and recommend corrective actions.\nWork closely with FPGA, embedded software, mechanical, integration and test, GSE, manufacturing, quality, and program personnel throughout product development.\nSupport transition of new designs from engineering development into repeatable production.\nMentor junior electrical engineers and provide technical guidance on design practices, analysis, troubleshooting, and hardware development.\nSupport customer technical discussions and design reviews as a subject matter expert for electrical hardware.\nPerform other duties as assigned.\nRequired Qualifications\nBachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a closely related engineering discipline.\n8Minimum of 9 years of experience designing complex electrical or electronic hardware.\nDemonstrated ownership of board-level electrical designs from concept and architecture through schematic capture, layout, fabrication, bring-up, and verification.\nStrong experience with digital circuit design involving processors, microcontrollers, FPGAs, memory, or similar complex devices.\nExperience designing high-speed digital interfaces such as DDR, PCIe, Ethernet, LVDS, or comparable interfaces.\nExperience performing or interpreting signal-integrity and power-integrity analyses.\nExperience with electrical design analysis including worst-case analysis, component derating, tolerance analysis, power analysis, or similar design-verification methods.\nExperience with power architecture, power sequencing, DC/DC conversion, point-of-load regulation, and power-distribution considerations for complex digital electronics.\nProficiency with electrical schematic capture and PCB design tools such as Altium Designer, Cadence/OrCAD, Siemens/Mentor, or equivalent.\nHands-on experience with hardware bring-up and troubleshooting using oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, DMMs, power supplies, protocol analyzers, and other laboratory equipment.\nAbility to independently evaluate complex technical problems, develop engineering solutions, and communicate technical rationale through analysis and design documentation.\nAbility to lead technical design reviews and provide technical guidance to other engineers.\nStrong written and verbal technical communication skills.\nPreferred Qualifications\nExperience designing electronics for spacecraft, launch vehicles, missiles, defense systems, avionics, or other high-reliability applications.\nExperience designing radiation-tolerant or radiation-effects-mitigated electronics for space environments.\nFamiliarity with radiation effects including TID, SEE, SEU, SET, SEL, and mitigation approaches at the component, circuit, and system levels.\nExperience with radiation testing, radiation-effects analysis, or selection and qualification of components for radiation environments.\nExperience with high-performance embedded processors, FPGAs, SoCs, or heterogeneous computing architectures.\nExperience designing DDR3/DDR4/DDR5 memory interfaces, PCIe, Gigabit Ethernet, high-speed serial transceivers, SpaceWire, CAN, RS-422/485, or similar interfaces.\nExperience with SI/PI simulation tools such as HyperLynx, Cadence Sigrity, Ansys SIwave, Keysight ADS or equivalent.\nExperience developing or reviewing PCB stack-ups, impedance requirements, routing constraints, and layout guidelines for high-speed electronics.\nExperience with EMI/EMC design practices, grounding, shielding, filtering, and noise mitigation.\nExperience with aerospace electrical design standards, parts control, component derating, reliability analysis, and high-reliability manufacturing practices.\nFamiliarity with environmental qualification standards and test methods applicable to aerospace electronics.\nExperience supporting qualification, acceptance, and production testing of flight electronics.\nExperience with VPX, SpaceVPX, VITA standards, or other modular embedded computing architectures.\nExperience with schematic and PCB design for compact, high-density, SWaP-constrained electronics.\nFamiliarity with FPGA and embedded software development sufficient to collaborate effectively across hardware, firmware, and software disciplines.\nExperience supporting technical proposals, customer design reviews, or new product development programs.\nPay Information\nFull-Time Salary Range: $114,000 - $211,000\nPlease Note: Actual compensation offered will be determined based on several factors including, but not limited to, relevant experience, skills, education, certifications, internal equity, business considerations, and geographic location where applicable.\nBenefits\nHired applicants may be eligible for benefits including but not limited to:\nHealth benefitsMedical \nDental \nVision\nBasic life with AD&D\nShort-term disability\nLong term disability\nAncillary (Voluntary life with AD&D, accident, critical illness, hospital, and pet)\nSpending accounts (HSA, FSA, and DCFSA)\n\nPaid time off\nHolidays\n401(k) (including company match)\nTuition reimbursement\nLeaves (Parental, maternity, and military)\nAnnual discretionary bonus (for eligible roles)\nTrident Systems reserves the right to change or assign other duties to this position. \nTrident Systems is an affirmative action and equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws. To request reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, please contact .\nPay Transparency: The contractor will not discharge or in any other manner discriminate against employees or applicants because they have inquired about, discussed, or disclosed their own pay or the pay of another employee or applicant. However, employees who have access to the compensation information of other employees or applicants as a part of their essential job functions cannot disclose the pay of other employees or applicants to individuals who do not otherwise have access to compensation information, unless the disclosure is (a) in response to a formal complaint or charge, (b) in furtherance of an investigation, proceeding, hearing, or action, including an investigation conducted by the employer, or (c) consistent with the contractor’s legal duty to furnish information. 41 CFR 60-1.35(c)","description_format":"text","description_chars":11189,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":9,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Artificial Intelligence","Military","Defense Manufacturing"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-05T01:29:48Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":32,"band":"fade","label":"Fading","p_open":1,"p_active":0.721,"p_room":0.45,"age_days":35,"expected_fill_days":20,"reasons":["conf:2","velocity","win:tail"],"computed_at":"2026-10-10T05:45:15Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":211000,"is_top_pay":false},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/trident-systems-principal-electrical-design-engineer-compute","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/trident-systems-principal-electrical-design-engineer-compute.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-12T02:18:33Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":3310,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-13T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":2311281},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=2311281"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Ftrident-systems-principal-electrical-design-engineer-compute"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Ftrident-systems-principal-electrical-design-engineer-compute"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Ftrident-systems-principal-electrical-design-engineer-compute"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/trident-systems-principal-electrical-design-engineer-compute\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Ftrident-systems-principal-electrical-design-engineer-compute"}]}