Senior Power Electronics Engineer

Apply Here: https://astrobotic-technology-inc.synchr-recruit.com/job/683835/senior-power-electronics-engineer-lunar-surface-systems

Astrobotic Technology, Inc. is a space robotics company that seeks to make space accessible to the world. The company’s suite of lunar landers and rovers delivers payloads to the Moon for companies, governments, universities, non-profits, and individuals. The company is also developing lunar power systems and advanced space robotics capabilities such as terrain relative navigation, mobile robotics for lunar surface operations, and reliable computing systems for mission-critical applications. Astrobotic is pioneering affordable planetary access that promises to spark a new era of exploration, science, tourism, resource utilization, and mining. Astrobotic is based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 

Astrobotic was selected by NASA in May 2019 for a $79.5 million contract to deliver a suite of NASA instruments to the Moon. This mission will see the Peregrine lunar lander return America to the Moon with 22 payloads representing 5 countries. In June 2020, Astrobotic was selected for a $199.5 million contract to deliver the NASA VIPER rover to the lunar south pole onboard the Griffin lunar lander. This mission will enable NASA’s objective to map water ice on the lunar surface, which in turn supports NASA’s plans for crewed missions in 2025. Astrobotic won a follow-on Option Phase contract for its novel Vertical Solar Array Technology (VSAT) system which will form the building blocks for a lunar power grid. The company is actively developing LunaGrid, a commercial power service for the poles of the moon. LunaGrid will deliver power by the watt to landers, rovers, habitats, science suites, and other lunar surface systems. The service will enable space agencies’, companies’, and nonprofits’ systems to survive the lunar night and operate indefinitely on the Moon starting at the lunar south pole.

Astrobotic’s Lunar Surface Systems Department wants you to support the design of its fleet of rovers, power systems, in-situ resource utilization technologies, and other cutting-edge solutions in space. The Lunar Surface Systems Department fosters a collaborative working environment with high degrees of freedom, responsibility, and expectations. We highly value teamwork. We’re building novel solutions to challenging technical problems with the goal of making space more accessible to the world as a commercial platform. Astrobotic has received 40+ NASA contracts to date in areas such as mobile robotics, lunar surface power systems, lunar night survival technology, multi-rover exploration, lunar cave exploration, lunar mining, remote non-geometric terrain sensing, planetary drones, autonomous precision landing, and high-performance computing. Astrobotic has secured funding for the first mission of its CubeRover platform, which will help develop night survival capability of small-scale rovers as well as demonstrate long-range communications on the moon. As part of Astrobotic’s Lunar Surface Systems Team, you will literally be creating history as we define the benchmark for commercial delivery of payloads and power to the Moon and beyond.

Responsibilities:

• Architect, build, test, and deploy a commercial lunar power grid to support human and robotic assets for multi-year missions.
• Perform component trade studies, assess system designs and architectures’ fault-tolerance, analyze trade-offs for system configurations to provide options on the basis of technical merit, cost, and schedule.
• Define requirements for power generation, storage, and transmission.
• Support component specification and selection efforts
• Develop detailed schematics and PCBs for control electronics, coordinate board fabrication, costing, and sourcing efforts
• Write test plans and support benchtop and thermal-vacuum tests for components and subsystems of engineering model and flight model power electronics hardware.
• Coordinate between technical partners, vendors, and other subsystem engineers to assess design progress, schedule, and risks.
• Communicate design recommendations and interface with all technical disciplines, including electrical engineering, software engineering, mechanical, thermal, and structural design.
• Provide real-time monitoring and troubleshooting during off-site radiation and EMI/EMC testing of power systems
• Implement the systems engineering development cycle.
• Provide technical input to proposal efforts; assist in developing design, analysis and testing work packages and associate level-of-effort estimates for future development efforts.

Required Skills and Qualifications: 

• Minimum B.S. in Electrical Engineering or Computer Engineering
• Minimum 6 years of experience in power systems development
• Experience in being a major part of technical teams across the entire project lifecycle both technically and    programmatically (budget, schedule, work agreement, and identification of receivable/deliverables)
• Skills to establish requirements and interfaces with project partners inside and outside of Astrobotic.
• Experience planning and operating tests involving thermal vacuum, EMI/EMC
• Thorough knowledge of industry practices
• Desire to work in a fast-paced development environment with cross-functional team projects.
• Excellent verbal, written, interpersonal, and organizational skills.

Desired Skills & Qualifications:

• Familiar with solar photovoltaic and lithium-ion battery technology.
• Experience with grid schemes, instrumentation, and fault protection.
• Experience with multiple switching power supply topologies at the design and build level.
• Experience with AC modulation schemes (PWM, Space Vector Control).
• Experience using SPICE for circuit analysis/modeling and familiarity with power electronics.
• Hands on experience working with electronics and lab equipment.
• Familiarity with power system telemetry measurement and processing.
• Experience with feedback loop design and analysis.
• Experience with digital control of switching power supplies.
• Experience with plant stability analysis (Power Bus Architectures, Nyquist Stability Analysis).
• Experience with power budgeting process and system level energy balance analysis.
• Experience with magnetics design and testing.
• Knowledge of spacecraft environmental tests.
• Familiarity with NASA-STD-4001, NASA-STD-4003, and MIL-STD-461

To conform to U.S. Government space technology export regulations, including the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) you must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3), or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.

Astrobotic Technology, Inc. does not discriminate in employment on the basis of race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy and gender identity), national origin, political affiliation, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, genetic information, age, membership in an employee organization, retaliation, parental status, military service, or other non-merit factor.

If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request to [email protected].