Hardware Design Engineer

About PulseForge

At PulseForge, we’re expanding the boundaries of advanced manufacturing through pulsed-light technology. As an Electrical Design Engineer, you’ll design the hardware behind our systems from power delivery and precision instrumentation to controls and system integration. You’ll work and collaborate across electrical, software, mechanical, manufacturing, and applications teams to take new products from concept through customer deployment.

The Team

You’ll join a growing electrical engineering team at the heart of every sub-system developed, tested, supported, and shipped at PulseForge. Every board that ships in a PulseForge system comes from this group. That means you'll see your work go from concept to production and hear directly how it performs in the field. There is very little distance between the engineer who designed the hardware and the outcome. You’ll be working on and developing differing systems ranging from instrumentation, mixed-signal electronics, power systems, control and safety systems.

What You’ll Do

• Develop schematics, select components, and evaluate design tradeoffs on hardware you own from concept through release
• System specifications and requirement gathering and definition
• Plan and develop PCB layouts following best practices for signal integrity, thermal performance, noise immunity, and EMI mitigation
• Bring up, debug, characterize, and validate new designs at the bench
• Design and execute test plans, fixtures, and experiments, and use data, simulations, and measurements to guide design decisions
• Collaborate with software, mechanical, manufacturing, and applications teams to develop solutions that work not only on the bench, but in production and at customer sites
• Help with sustaining work and product improvements across our installed base.

B.S. in Electrical Engineering or equivalent

2+ years of experience designing, building, and testing electronic hardware

Experience developing original circuits and making design decisions from first principles, rather than only modifying existing designs. Substantial research, competition, hobby, or personal project experience may count toward this requirement when it demonstrates meaningful design, build, test, and debugging work

Strong fundamentals and comfort working at the boundaries between analog, digital, and power. Comfortable at the bench with oscilloscopes, power supplies, electronic loads, and common lab equipment

Strong debugging and troubleshooting skills

High-voltage power electronics and high-energy power delivery

Optical instrumentation and precision sensing

Embedded control hardware and data acquisition

Computing modules, firmware, and FPGA-based systems

High-speed measurement and diagnostics

Safety-critical industrial equipment

Strong Analog Design experience

Firmware or FPGA development, and comfort working across hardware and software during integration and debugging

Power supply or mixed-signal circuit design

Experience working on systems subject to harsh environments and demanding specifications

You've designed something that was built and tested

You enjoy working at the bench and using measurements to resolve technical questions and guide decisions

You improve systems you inherit instead of simply documenting their flaws

You're comfortable with ambiguity and can make progress without every requirement being fully defined

You want to grow toward greater technical ownership, including leading subsystem designs and making well-supported design decisions

Austin, Texas (On-Site) Travel less than 5%

$100,000-$140,000 annual salary

Basic Qualifications Technologies You’ll Encounter

You’ll work in Altium, LTspice, PSIM, and Vivado, and in a lab with scopes, DMMs, signal generators, bolometers, and soldering and rework stations. You do not need experience in every area above. We are looking for engineers with strong fundamentals, hands-on experience, curiosity, and a willingness to learn.

Bonus Qualifications What We’re Looking For How You’ll Grow

Within your first six months, you’ll support released products and own defined portions of active development programs. Within your first year, we expect you to be originating circuits and carrying complete subsystems from concept through release. We’re making this hire with the expectation that the role will grow into significant technical ownership over time.

Location & Compensation

PulseForge is building advanced manufacturing technology that is redefining what and how materials can be processed and how products are made. If you are passionate about building hardware, solving difficult engineering problems, and seeing your work deployed in real-world systems, we would love to hear from you.

Salary Range: $95k- $130k annual; salary is commensurate on experience.