Principle Hardware Engineer

About Odyssey

Odyssey is building full-stack space supercomputers that bypass the physical limits of terrestrial data centers — power, cooling, water, and bandwidth — by running compute where physics works for us instead of against us. We are backed by world-class investors in pursuit of a multi-planetary scale vision.

Our flagship vehicle, Odysseus-1, is designed to be the most compact and most powerful orbital supercomputer ever launched. It is the seed of a constellation that will make orbital compute a first-class option alongside the largest Earth-based data centers.

About the Role

We are hiring our Principal Hardware Engineer — a technical leader who will own the satellite as a system, from architecture through integration, environmental qualification, and on-orbit commissioning. You will work directly with the CEO, the existing engineering team, and a bench of deeply technical advisors to take Odysseus-1 to launch and to set the architectural foundation for every vehicle that follows.

This is a zero-to-one role at the deepest level. You will make the calls that decide whether Odyssey ships the most capable orbital supercomputer ever built — or not.

What You’ll Own

• Vehicle architecture. Drive the end-to-end satellite architecture: mass, volume, power, thermal, pointing, propulsion, comms, and payload integration. Run and defend the trade studies that decide the configuration and launch path for each vehicle.
• Payload integration. Integrate an extremely high-density, high-performance compute payload into a tightly constrained spacecraft envelope. Define the mechanical, electrical, and thermal interfaces that let advanced silicon survive and perform in orbit.
• Thermal and structural design. Own the passive thermal path end-to-end, from silicon junction to deep-space radiative rejection. Own the primary structure through launch-environment qualification.
• Test campaigns and qualification. Stand up and lead hardware test programs spanning thermal-vacuum, vibration, EMI/EMC, radiation, and end-to-end day-in-the-life testing. Close out a qualification record that holds up to customer, investor, and regulator scrutiny.
• Supply chain and build. Select and qualify vendors across the full stack — structures, thermal, power, avionics, propulsion, ADCS, and communications. Drive cost, lead time, and flight-heritage decisions that scale from a single pilot vehicle to an annual build cadence.
• Architectural roadmap. Use what we learn on the first vehicle to define the architecture of the entire constellation — compute density per kilogram, redundancy strategy, and the path to the next order of magnitude in performance.
• Technical leadership. Recruit, mentor, and lead an elite hardware team. Set engineering standards, run design reviews, and be the technical voice that the CEO, advisors, and customers trust.

Required Qualifications

• Satellite systems depth. 5+ years designing, building, and flying spacecraft — or a shorter track record with exceptional intensity — with hands-on ownership across at least two of: mechanical/structural, thermal, power, avionics, and C&DH, ADCS, propulsion, or payload integration. You can defend the numbers behind every subsystem on a whiteboard.
• Zero-to-one delivery, repeatedly. You have taken at least two non-trivial hardware programs from a blank sheet to a functioning product. You have operated without process scaffolding and built it as needed.
• Advanced compute hardware fluency. Deep experience designing around high-performance, high-density compute — FPGAs, GPUs, AI accelerators, custom silicon, and unconventional compute architectures (analog, mixed-signal, stochastic, neuromorphic, or other non-standard paradigms). You understand what breaks when you put a server in a vacuum and what it takes to make it work anyway.
• Environmental qualification experience. Demonstrated ownership of thermal-vacuum, vibration, and radiation test campaigns. Comfortable with standards such as GEVS, MIL-STD-1540 / 461, ECSS, or equivalent.
• High agency and leadership. You have led engineering teams and driven cross-functional programs to hard deadlines. You default to ownership, escalate early, and finish what you start. You raise the bar for the people around you.
• Product instinct and attention to detail. You care about tolerances, margins, mass budgets, harness routing, and interface control — and you care about what the customer actually wants to buy. You will not let a beautiful design ship with a sloppy interface.
• Communication. You can write a clean technical memo, defend a design review in front of a skeptical audience, and tell the hard truth before it becomes an incident.
• Education. BS, MS, or PhD in Aerospace, Mechanical, Electrical, Physics, or a related discipline — or equivalent demonstrated mastery. Degrees are evidence, not requirements; we care about what you have actually built.

Strongly Preferred

• Experience with novel computing paradigms. Direct exposure to unconventional or physics-based compute — for example, analog, stochastic, neuromorphic, or sampling-based accelerators; energy-based models; Bayesian or Monte Carlo hardware; or sub-threshold / mixed-signal designs. Academic, industrial, or hobbyist experience all count.
• Small-sat / ESPA-class flight heritage. You have flown hardware in LEO on a small-sat, ESPA-class, or CubeSat mission, and you know what actually breaks between integration and commissioning.
• Communications payload experience. Experience with optical inter-satellite links, pointing and acquisition, or high-rate RF systems at the payload level.
• Radiation-tolerant design. You have designed for TID, SEE, and SEL in LEO or harsher orbits, and have used redundancy, scrubbing, or self-healing techniques in anger.
• Defense / ISR context. You have shipped for DoD, IC, or allied-government customers and understand what ITAR compliance actually feels like inside an engineering organization.
• Hands-on maker. You have personally built something real in your garage, lab, or spare time. Bonus points if it reached orbit.

Traits We Look For

We are looking for a world-class engineer, not a world-class manager of engineers. The person who gets this role will:

• Treat “I don’t know” as a bug and close it fast.
• Default to first principles when the textbook answer is uneconomical.
• Be irrationally attached to the schedule and brutally honest about slips.
• Care about the last 5% — the tolerance stack, the harness routing, the copy in the data sheet.
• Be comfortable being the smartest person in the room, and even more comfortable hiring people who are smarter.
• Want their work in orbit on a deadline, not in a paper.

Location and Working Style

This role is on-site in El Segundo, California — the densest square mile of advanced aerospace and defense engineering in the United States. This is a high-intensity role. We work the hours the mission requires.

ITAR Requirements

To conform to U.S. Government export regulations, the applicant must be (i) a U.S. citizen or national, (ii) a U.S. lawful permanent resident (green card holder), (iii) a refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or (iv) an asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, or otherwise eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.

Odyssey is an equal-opportunity employer. We evaluate applicants on the quality of their work and the clarity of their thinking.