Electrical Engineer - All Levels

ABOUT EON

EON is building the highest-throughput point-to-point data transport network ever deployed in space. Using free-space laser links in Medium Earth Orbit (MEO), we move petabytes of data between any two points on Earth as an alternative to subsea or terrestrial fiber. EON recently closed a $10.75M seed financing round led by Andreessen Horowitz and General Catalyst in their first-ever co-led space deal. EON is building out of its R&D center in Culver City.

Today, approximately 95% of the global internet travels through a few hundred subsea fiber-optic cables, infrastructure designed in the early 2000s that has gone largely unchanged. Demand for new fiber has never been higher, but laying it is extraordinarily difficult: permits, ocean geology, and geopolitical boundaries make every new cable a years-long, billion-dollar undertaking. That bottleneck is a liability with cables at constant risk of being cut, whether by accident or adversarial action, and no amount of ground-based investment can fully solve it.

THE ROLE

EON's optical hardware runs on electronics at every layer: the boards that drive and measure optical components, the high-speed signal chain under the coherent transceiver, and the flight electronics of the payload itself. We are seeking electrical engineers across these concentrations, and we'll put you where your depth matters most. You'll partner with the optical seats whose hardware your electronics power, drive, and measure, and work alongside the other EEs across the terminal and payload.

CONCENTRATIONS

1. Board-Level & Bring-Up You design and bring up the boards under every optical component: driver electronics (laser drivers, EDFA pump drivers, TEC controllers), photodetector and sensor readout, control and interface boards, bench power, and harnessing. You may excel here if you've owned boards from schematic through layout, and bring-up and debug with a scope in hand is your comfort zone.

2. Modem & High-Speed Mixed-Signal You own the high-speed signal chain under the coherent transceiver: ADC/DAC interfaces, low-jitter clocking, multi-Gbaud modem boards, and the FPGA gateware carrying real-time DSP. You may excel here if you've shipped multi-GHz mixed-signal designs or gateware validated on real hardware, and signal integrity is second nature.

3. Spaceflight / Payload Hardware You take the payload's opto-electronic boards from bench-grade to space-qualified flight hardware: EEE parts selection, derating, radiation tolerance, and qualification campaigns through thermal-vac and vibration. You may excel here if you've built electronics that survived launch, vacuum, and radiation.

Not sure, or a strong generalist? If you move across board design, high-speed work, and flight hardware rather than living in one concentration, that's a seat too. You'll grow into the concentration that fits you best as the electronics team takes shape.

RESPONSIBILITIES

- Design, lay out, and bring up electronics across the terminal and payload, owning your boards from schematic through validated hardware

- Define electrical interfaces with the optical seats, translating each subsystem's power, drive, and readout needs into schematics and boards

- Select, evaluate, and qualify components, balancing performance, availability, and lead time at seed-stage speed

- Characterize and debug at the bench, chasing issues across electrical, optical, and software boundaries

- Support integration and test as the optical chain and payload come together

- Document designs, test results, and bring-up procedures so hardware can be rebuilt and debugged by others

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS

- Bachelor's or advanced degree in electrical engineering or a related discipline

- Board-level design experience across schematic capture and PCB layout

- Hands-on bring-up and debug depth with oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and lab instrumentation

- Analog and mixed-signal circuit fundamentals

- Proficiency with a professional EDA tool (Altium Designer, KiCad, Cadence, or equivalent)

- Comfort moving fast and making sound calls without complete data

PREFERRED EXPERIENCE

- Driver electronics for optical or photonic components: laser diode drivers, TEC controllers, or EDFA pump drivers

- Photodetector or low-noise sensor readout design (TIAs, precision ADC front ends)

- High-speed design: multi-GHz signal chains, SerDes, controlled impedance, and SI/PI analysis

- FPGA development (RTL in Verilog or VHDL) validated on real hardware

- Flight or space-qualified electronics: radiation-tolerant design, EEE parts flows, derating, and worst-case analysis

- Environmental qualification campaigns (vibration, thermal-vac, EMI/EMC)

- Power architecture design: distribution, sequencing, and protection for multi-rail systems

- Python or MATLAB for test automation and measurement post-processing

A note on level and background: We hire this role at all levels, from Associate through Senior and Principal Electrical Engineer, and calibrate title, scope, and compensation to your experience. If this list doesn't perfectly match your background still reach out. We are always looking for exceptional people from many disciplines.

WHAT THIS JOB IS REALLY LIKE

We're a seed-stage company building toward first light on a single-route demonstrator. There's no program office and no requirements team. Your boards will sit under lasers, amplifiers, detectors, and eventually a payload in orbit, and you'll spend real time at the bench with the hardware they drive. If you do your best work inside a large, well-resourced program, this isn't it. If you want your fingerprints on a Tbps-class link from the start, this is it.

COMPENSATION + BENEFITS

In addition to base salary (to be determined on a case by case basis), compensation for this role includes:

- EON believes the business should be primarily employee owned. In turn, all compensation offers include company stock options for FTEs.

- Comprehensive medical, vision, and dental insurance with significant cost covered by the company for yourself and dependents.

- Paid parental leave and flexible PTO (3 weeks accrued vacation and 10 company holidays per year).

- Relocation assistance to Los Angeles available.

- A real equipment and lab budget.

Location: Culver City, CA (onsite).

Endeavor Optical Network is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with EON is governed on the basis of merit, competence and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability or any other legally protected status.