Varda Space Industries
Automation and Controls Engineer II
About this role
Varda seeks an Automation and Controls Engineer II to design and build ground support equipment and test systems for spaceflight hardware qualification. You'll work with modern PLC frameworks, EtherCAT tooling, and diverse industrial hardware while owning sophisticated test infrastructure end-to-end in a fast-paced space tech environment.
What you'll do
- Design, build, and maintain ground support equipment and test systems for flight hardware qualification and manufacturing
- Integrate external hardware including thermal vacuum chambers, ovens, chillers, pressure systems, and precision instrumentation
- Develop and extend Varda's internal PLC framework and EtherCAT tooling
- Contribute to architecture decisions on real-time control implementation, evaluating PLC-based versus Linux-based approaches
- Build electrical cabinets and wire panels, owning systems from design through commissioning
- Partner with propulsion, avionics, GNC, and manufacturing teams to deliver test infrastructure on tight schedules
What they're looking for
- PLC programming (Beckhoff TwinCAT 3, IEC 61131-3 structured text)
- Industrial hardware integration (EtherCAT, Modbus, RS-232/485 serial)
- Electrical panel and cabinet design
- Real-time control systems and deterministic control loops
- Test automation and controls engineering
- Python orchestration and higher-level scripting
- Data acquisition and visualization tools
- Aerospace and environmental testing experience
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Varda Space Industries
Varda Space Industries builds commercial spacecraft and orbital manufacturing systems for missions in low Earth orbit, including reentry capsules and satellite buses. The company is hiring mission operations engineers, software engineers (ground segment, flight, and embedded), and manufacturing engineers to develop mission-critical systems, operational infrastructure, and scalable production capabilities.
- Website
- varda.com
Likely interview questions
- Describe your hands-on experience integrating industrial hardware over EtherCAT or similar protocols—what challenges did you encounter and how did you resolve them?
- Walk us through a time you designed a control system where you had to choose between PLC-based and Linux-based approaches. What were the key tradeoffs?