The assembler, using a complete set of design documents and components provided by the design engineer, will build a complete electronic assembly or sub assembly ready for testing by the electronic technician (this could be the same person).

This is an entry level position ideal of a student interested in gaining hands-on experience building electronic devices or for the electronic hobbyist who enjoys building electronic equipment. Some knowledge of electronics is desirable but not required. Individual or group training can be provided in any of these areas. This is ideal position for someone who likes to build electronic devices for a hobby.

The circuit board designer would be responsible for taking an electronic schematic and laying out the components and traces for a printed circuit board. We typically us an automated ORCAD program to assist in circuit board layout. This job isn’t terribly technically challenging but requires a combination of art, science and intuition to create a quality product. Ideally, this position would be filled by an Electrical Engineering student with some ORCAD experience, but if you’ve never used ORCAD we can teach you how.

Shop ‘till you drop! The best design in the world is useless if critical components aren’t available when needed. A buyer would assist engineers by shopping different vendors to find the best source for hard to find materials. This job requires some understanding of basic engineering specifications. It is fairly time consuming but does not require a great deal of technical experience.

We are in desperate need of more Junior or Senior Electrical Engineering students for simple to moderately complex design work. The design challenges should be relatively straight forward. The designs might be for a stand alone instrument or you might be asked to build or modify a circuit to be integrated into a more complex instrument.

An electronic technician would be responsible for testing engineering prototypes and flight hardware, calibrating instruments and troubleshooting. This position requires some familiarity with electronic systems and test equipment and would be appropriate for a hobbyist or someone who has completed or is enrolled in at least one electronics lab course.

We have several advanced design tasks that stretch the limits of our current design capabilities or have demanding specifications. These are technically challenging problems and success is by no means assured. There is an immediate need for engineers familiar with embedded systems, analog and digital circuit design.

Flight instruments with embedded processors (which are not fully defined) may require a significant micro-programming effort in either assembly and/or C language.

The ultimate end product of a sounding rocket experiment is the data collected during the flight. As soon as possible after launch, flight data should be made available to the experimenters in a usable format. These data should tell us something meaningful about the physics of the experiment. Did the rocket and payload systems perform as expected? What does the data tell us about the space environment? How do we communicate our results so that other experimenters may benefit from our findings? The data collected during a sounding rocket experiment should tell a story. Someone with good communications skills and technical knowledge is needed to help us tell that story.

PC based applications for ground support equipment and other instrumentation support functions. Programmers are needed to develop custom C and C++ communications and scientific data processing software.

This is one of our more interesting tasks. Students who have become expert in specific payload systems during design and fabrication may be asked to travel to Poker Flat Research Range to support payload integration and launch.

Design an input power filter circuit for sensitive flight instruments.

The circuit board designer would be responsible for taking an electronic schematic and laying out the components and traces for a printed circuit board. We typically us an automated ORCAD program to assist in circuit board layout. This job isn’t terribly technically challenging but requires a combination of art, science and intuition to create a quality product. Ideally, this position would be filled by an Electrical Engineering student with some ORCAD experience, but if you’ve never used ORCAD we can teach you how.

Design a circuit board to convert four K type thermocouples to an analog voltage. We have a preliminary design that just needs to be taken to completion. If you’re looking for a simple project to get started with, this is it.

We need an engineer with embedded systems experience to design an EZ-80 based system that will be used to convert scientific data to TCP/IP on board for near real time access on the World Wide Web during the flight. This is a major piece of design work for someone looking for a real challenge!

If you want a small project but with a bit more challenge, this could be just the ticket. We need someone to design a battery powered remote temperature sensor that takes a K type thermocouple input and converts it to a digital signal interfaced to a remote microprocessor via a fiber optic link. This project involves some challenging micro-power design issues that could make this an interesting job. We’ve done some preliminary investigations so we can help you get started if these concepts are new to you.

We have an ADC that is part of an existing design that needs to be modified to use an external precision voltage reference.

Design a low power reed relay circuit for instrument onboard self diagnostics. Low power consumption, reliability and minimizing the PCB footprint are the design issues for this job.