Varda Space Industries
Ground Support Equipment, Design Engineer II
About this role
Varda seeks a Design Engineer II to architect and build sophisticated ground support equipment and test systems that qualify spaceflight hardware for orbit. You'll design custom test infrastructure including propulsion stands and thermal chambers, develop their in-house PLC framework using Beckhoff EtherCAT, and own systems end-to-end from electrical design through commissioning.
What you'll do
- Design, build, and maintain test systems and GSE for flight hardware qualification and manufacturing
- Integrate external hardware including thermal vacuum chambers, 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 (PLC vs. Linux approaches)
- Build electrical cabinets and wire panels, owning systems from design through commissioning
- Partner with propulsion, avionics, and manufacturing teams to deliver test infrastructure on aggressive timelines
What they're looking for
- PLC programming (Beckhoff TwinCAT 3 and IEC 61131-3 structured text preferred)
- Industrial hardware integration (EtherCAT, Modbus, RS-232/485 serial protocols)
- Electrical panel design and cabinet wiring
- Real-time control systems and deterministic control loops
- Python or similar high-level orchestration languages
- Test automation and systems integration
- Data acquisition and monitoring tools (Grafana, InfluxDB)
- Aerospace or spacecraft 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
- Tell us about your most complex GSE or test automation project—what hardware did you integrate and what was the outcome?
- How would you decide whether to implement logic in real-time PLC code versus higher-level Python orchestration?