The role

You will design the electronic boards for a drone tether station and for the airside hardware. This covers the full process: requirements, schematic, PCB layout, prototype fabrication, testing, and EMC compliance. You do the layout yourself in Altium Designer. You also stay with the board through DFM and into production.

The team is nine engineers across mechanical, electrical, firmware, and software.

Responsibilities

Design schematics and PCB layouts in Altium Designer for ground station and airside boards
Work on mixed-signal designs covering power conversion, motor drive, CAN FD, microcontrollers, and sensors
Select components based on datasheet review, derating, and availability
Design for EMC from the start: grounding, return paths, filtering, shielding, and isolation
Run pre-compliance EMC tests and fix failures before they reach the certification phase
Support certification work for EMC, radio, and safety standards including EN 55032, EN 55035, EN 61000, and IEC 62368-1
Bring up your own boards and debug them at the bench
Review fab and assembly feedback, design in test points and test coverage, and support production builds
Keep BOMs, revisions, and ECOs in order
Take part in design reviews, both as the person presenting and the person reviewing

For airside boards, you will also need to work within weight and size limits and thermal management.

Requirements

Degree in Electrical or Electronic Engineering, or equivalent experience
3 to 6 years designing electronic hardware that went into production
Good working knowledge of Altium Designer, including multilayer layout and impedance control
Practical EMC design experience - you can explain why a board passed or failed
Able to design boards to meet EN 55032, EN 55035, and the EN 61000 series for CE EMI/EMC compliance
Experience with switch-mode power supplies
Understanding of high-voltage design rules (creepage, clearance, isolation, protection)
Experience designing around microcontrollers such as STM32: power sequencing, clocks, memory, and peripherals
Familiar with CAN or CAN FD, or a similar industrial bus
Comfortable using an oscilloscope, spectrum analyser, and power meter

Good to have

CE marking experience, in particular the EMC, radio, and safety directives
Experience in drones, robotics, aerospace, or defence
Certification experience in other markets such as FCC, UKCA, or VCCI
BLDC motor drive design (FOC, gate drivers)
Experience with fiber optics or high-speed serial links
Enough firmware skill to write your own bring-up code

Electronic Design Engineer