Varda Space Industries
Terrestrial Automation and Controls Engineer II
About this role
Varda seeks an Automation and Controls Engineer II to design and build sophisticated ground support equipment and test systems for spaceflight hardware qualification. You'll own the full stack—from electrical design through commissioning—working with custom PLC frameworks and EtherCAT tooling on propulsion test stands, environmental chambers, and spacecraft-level integration testing.
What you'll do
- Design, build, and maintain test systems and ground support equipment for flight hardware qualification
- Integrate external hardware including thermal vacuum chambers, pressure systems, and precision instrumentation
- Develop and extend Varda's internal PLC framework and EtherCAT tooling using TwinCAT 3
- Contribute to architecture decisions on real-time control implementation for high-frequency applications
- Build electrical cabinets and wire panels, owning systems end-to-end 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, structured text, IEC 61131-3)
- Industrial hardware integration (EtherCAT, Modbus, RS-232/485 serial protocols)
- Electrical panel and cabinet design and wiring
- Real-time control systems and deterministic control loops
- Python orchestration and higher-level software development
- Thermal vacuum, environmental, and vibration testing experience
- Data acquisition and time-series visualization tools (Grafana, InfluxDB)
- Aerospace or spacecraft testing background
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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
- Walk us through a test system you designed end-to-end—what were the key challenges integrating hardware, and how did you solve them?
- Describe your experience with EtherCAT and when you've had to go beyond standard vendor tooling to solve a problem.