Hardware Electronics Engineer (UAV)

Details:

Location: Leerdam, Netherlands (hybrid or remote)

Employment: full-time or B2B

Level: Middle / Senior

• We're partnering with a defence technology company developing and mass-producing autonomous systems for real-world deployment.
• This is a full-cycle hardware business where R&D, engineering, manufacturing and field operations sit close together, and where products evolve continuously based on direct operational feedback.
• The company is already operating at meaningful scale, with a growing ecosystem spanning UAVs, unmanned ground systems and communication technologies. As the product line expands, they're strengthening the hardware team. We're looking for a Hardware Electronics Engineer to join this team.

• The Role:
• You'll design electronics for UAV components, primarily flight controllers and ESCs, and own the full hardware cycle from schematic to production-ready PCB. You'll take boards through layout, manufacturing outputs, DFM with fabs and assembly houses, and into the lab for bring-up and debugging, with your designs going into products that are built at volume and used in the field.
• For an engineer with a background in power electronics or motor control, this is an opportunity to work on compact, high-current boards where design decisions have direct, visible impact.

Responsibilities:

Design schematics for flight controllers, ESCs and related UAV electronics: component selection, power stages, MCU circuits, sensors and interfaces

Create multilayer PCB layouts in Altium, including high-current power routing, thermal management and signal integrity

Prepare manufacturing outputs: Gerbers, BOM, pick-and-place, assembly drawings

Support the DFM/DFA phase together with PCB fabs and assembly houses

Bring up and debug prototypes, and fix issues found in testing

Take part in peer design reviews, both giving and receiving feedback

Maintain design documentation and component libraries

Requirements:

3+ years of hands-on hardware design experience (schematic and PCB layout)

Strong working knowledge of Altium Designer

Experience with multilayer PCBs and power electronics: DC-DC converters, MOSFET stages, current sensing

Experience with microcontroller-based designs (e.g. STM32) and common interfaces: SPI, I2C, UART, CAN

Practical understanding of DFM/DFA and work with PCB manufacturers

Lab skills: oscilloscope, power supply, multimeter, soldering and rework

Technical English sufficient to read datasheets and write documentation

Would be a plus : direct experience with drone flight controllers or ESCs (BLDC motor drives, FOC); familiarity with ArduPilot, PX4 or Betaflight hardware ecosystems; EMC/EMI-aware design for compact, high-current boards; design for harsh environments (vibration, temperature); basic Python for test automation.