Senior Manager, Digital & Mixed-Signal Hardware

Job description

***Please Note:**To conform with the United States Government Space Technology Export Regulations, the applicant must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., conditional resident, asylee or refugee (protected individuals as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3)), or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.* At **CesiumAstro**, we are developers and pioneers of out-of-the-box communication systems for satellites, UAVs, launch vehicles, and other space and airborne platforms. We take pride in our dynamic and cross-functional work environment, which allows us to learn, develop, and engage across our organization. If you are looking for hands-on, interactive, and autonomous work, CesiumAstro is the place for you. We are actively seeking passionate, collaborative, energetic, and forward-thinking individuals to join our team. CesiumAstro is seeking a **Senior Engineering Manager, Digital & Mixed-Signal Hardware** to lead a growing team developing high-performance electronics for our communications systems, including software-defined radios, space-computing platforms, and phased-array control systems. You will be accountable for the technical quality and on-time delivery of your team’s hardware, from architecture and design through production. This is a deeply technical management role, but not an individual-contributor design role. You will stay close to the engineering through technical guidance, design and architecture reviews, mentorship, and critical debug, while building a team that consistently produces excellent work. You will also help establish the standards, tools, processes, and reusable engineering approaches that allow CesiumAstro’s hardware teams to execute rigorously and efficiently across sites. ### WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE - Your team delivers high-quality, manufacturable hardware to our product lines predictably and on schedule. Accountability does not stop when prototypes work. - Designs transition successfully into repeatable production at the required scale, with technical and manufacturing risks identified and addressed early. - Engineering quality improves as the organization grows. You stay close enough to the technical details to identify weaknesses, mentor engineers through them, and turn lessons learned into better standards, tools, reviews, and processes. - Teams benefit from shared engineering practices and technical knowledge across CesiumAstro. Engineers reuse proven components, designs, and approaches where appropriate, while common processes and standards enable rigorous engineering without unnecessary bureaucracy. - You build a stronger engineering organization, not just successful individual programs. Engineers grow in technical judgment and responsibility, strong technical and people leaders emerge, and the organization develops the capability and leadership structure needed to scale. - The initial team will include approximately 8-12 direct reports, primarily in Austin and Westminster, with a smaller presence in El Segundo. As CesiumAstro grows, people management is expected to become increasingly site-focused while this role continues to provide technical and process leadership across the company. ### JOB DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES - Maintain technical integrity and engineering excellence for board-level digital and mixed-signal electronics development across the company. - Establish, mature, and scale engineer-friendly digital hardware development processes, including high-speed interface design guidelines, signal integrity simulation workflows, and schematic and layout standards for dense, high-layer-count PCBs. - Provide detailed technical review and mentorship through architecture and design reviews, identifying design risks and errors early, helping engineers develop stronger engineering judgment, and ensuring appropriate subject matter expert (SME) engagement across digital, RF, power, firmware, and mechanical disciplines. - Occasionally contribute directly to board-level digital and mixed-signal designs, particularly to close temporary gaps in high-risk or schedule-critical programs. - Lead or support complex debug efforts involving high-speed interfaces, large FPGA and processor implementations, and related technical topics. - Ensure digital hardware designs are buildable and testable at scale using DFM and DFT best practices. - Drive disciplined handoff from engineering to manufacturing through close collaboration with manufacturing engineering, supply chain, and production test engineering. - Ensure designs meet quality, reliability, and scalability requirements for aerospace and defense production environments. - Partner with Supply Chain to ensure component availability, lifecycle risk mitigation, and cost awareness. - Drive design reuse, modular architectures, and platform commonality across products to accelerate execution and reduce risk. ### TEAM LEADERSHIP, STAFFING & PERFORMANCE RESPONSIBILITIES - Build, scale, and lead a high-performing digital and mixed-signal hardware engineering team that delivers reliably to multidisciplinary product teams. - Lead, coach, and develop an initial team of approximately 8-12 engineers distributed primarily across Austin and Westminster, with a smaller presence in El Segundo. - Partner with product and program leadership to plan work, allocate resources, surface technical risk early, and hold the team accountable to realistic delivery commitments. - Own staffing and team development, including hiring, performance management, career development, coaching, and succession planning. - Provide one-on-one coaching, mentoring, and deep technical guidance. - Plan and manage budgets related to staffing, lab equipment, capital equipment, and design/simulation software. - Maintain strong working relationships across Engineering, Quality, and Operations. ### JOB REQUIREMENTS AND MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS - Bachelor’s degree or higher in Electrical Engineering or Computer Engineering required. - Minimum of 7 years of direct digital or mixed-signal hardware engineering experience, preferably in aerospace environments. 1–3 years of small-team technical leadership or engineering management experience preferred but not required. - Demonstrated expertise in high-speed digital and mixed-signal board design. - Strong understanding of signal integrity (SI) and timing. - Experience supporting design for manufacturability (DFM), design for test (DFT), and transition from development to production. - Proven ability to conduct rigorous technical reviews, mentor engineers, and communicate effectively across disciplines. - Ability to balance rigor with execution speed in a fast-paced development environment. - Proficiency with high-speed simulation and analysis tools such as Ansys SiWave or ADS SiPro. - Deep hands-on experience with schematic capture and PCB layout tools such as Altium. - Familiarity with FPGA toolchains (e.g. Xilinx Vivado) preferred. - Strong technical and non-technical communication skills.