About this role
SpaceX was founded under the belief that a future where humanity is out exploring the stars is fundamentally more exciting than one where we are not. Today SpaceX is actively developing the technologies to make this possible, with the ultimate goal of enabling human life on Mars.
SR. ELECTROMAGNETIC EFFECTS ENGINEER (LIGHTNING EFFECTS)
As a member of our fast-paced electromagnetic environmental effects (E3) team, you will be responsible for ensuring hardware performance through some of the harshest and varied electromagnetic environments imaginable. Your explicit goal will be ensuring that our orbital class reusable launch vehicles are designed to handle direct and indirect effects of lightning phenomena. The E3 team at SpaceX performs exhaustive analysis, design, and test at the board, unit, subsystem, and system levels with extensive opportunity to interact with a vast array of rocket, spacecraft, and ground support equipment hardware and electronics. As one of the few teams required to interface with the design, manufacturing, integration, and mission operations teams, they play a critical role in the development of SpaceX systems as we advance our efforts towards broadband satellite internet and safe, reliable, inexpensive, and innovative access to space with the fundamental goal of expanding human space exploration capabilities.
RESPONSIBILITIES:
• Perform lightning zoning analysis and design SpaceX orbital vehicles to survive lightning direct and indirect effects
• Perform computational modeling of lightning stress coupling to electrical interfaces using CST, HFSS, EMA3D or other EM solvers
• Perform analysis to characterize lightning effects and mitigations including circuit and power system grounding architectures, structural electrical bonding, circuit isolation, transfer impedance, shielding effectiveness, near field/far field electrodynamics, arc flash, etc.
• Inform and review direct and indirect effects testing to verify lightning robustness on subsystems including propulsion systems, recovery systems, autonomous flight safety systems, solar arrays, structures, avionics, ground support equipment, RF and communications systems
• Generate control plans, technical memos, test plans and test reports as needed
BASIC QUALIFICATIONS:
• Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, physics, or other engineering discipline
• 3+ years of experience in electromagnetic environmental effects or computational physics
• Experience programming in Python
PREFERRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE:
• 5+ years of E3 work experience, including EMI/EMC requirements, analysis, design, and testing Previous work experience with SAE ARP lightning specifications, DO160G, MIL-STD-461MIL-STD-464, NFPA - 780 (DO-160 training and/or certification credentials)
• Knowledge of lightning electromagnetic effects on commercial aircraft, space vehicles, and launch vehicles including effects of grounding/