Electrical Engineer (Contract): PCB Design and Electronics Lead

About the Project Eve is a privacy wearable. We are in active build of the first functional prototype FP1. Full technical details, including what the device does and how it works, are shared once an NDA is in place. What we can say up front is that the electronics work is real embedded power design in a small, battery-powered form factor. The role This role is expected to quickly grow into ownership of the electronics system, starting with the prototype board design and build. The first task is to consolidate the current dev-board electronics onto a single custom PCB spanning these major functional areas: - Power conditioning (battery charging, multi-rail regulation) - Microcontroller - Load drive and switching - Interconnect and connectors - Thermal management Deliverables for the board: schematic capture, PCB layout, and BOM with sourcing notes. The role also covers procurement, including sourcing and ordering boards and parts, and hand-assembly of the initial prototype boards in small quantity, through to a bench-verified board with a short bring-up and test report. From there, the role expands into ongoing ownership of the electronics: refining the power and thermal design as the prototype scales, tuning drive behavior, and running ongoing bring-up, debug, and bench characterization. Who you'll work with: This is a small, hands-on team. You would own the electronics, and work closely with two others. Technical lead. Sets overall technical direction and owns the broader system that the electronics serve. You would partner with the technical lead on requirements and integration decisions, and translate the system goals into the board and drive design. Firmware currently sits with the technical lead, so you would coordinate initially on the control interface between hardware and software. Mechanical engineer. The mechanical engineer owns the housing, internal mounting, and assembly. You would work with them on board outline and connector placement, heat paths through the enclosure, and how the board assembles into the device, so the electronics and mechanical designs converge rather than collide late. Client. Most client communication flows through the technical lead. Expect occasional involvement around prototype reviews and milestone demos, where your work and its results may be presented or discussed. Minimal, but not zero. The team works in tight loops, so expect direct and frequent contact with both rather than long handoffs. Required experience - PCB design end to end: schematic capture and layout KiCad, Altium, or Eagle) - Embedded power electronics: multi-rail design, regulation, battery charging and protection - Load drive and switching with appropriate protection - Thermal design for power dissipation in constrained enclosures - Microcontroller integration, ideally ESP32 family - Battery-powered and space-constrained design - Component and board procurement, plus hand-assembly of small-quantity prototype boards - Hands-on bench bring-up and debug: oscilloscope, function generator, bench supply Strong pluses - Wearables or other small-form-factor product experience - Design-for-manufacture sensibility for low-volume prototyping - BLE or wireless integration - Comfort working under NDA on early-stage, confidential hardware How we work - Minimum viable test philosophy: simplest experiment that answers the critical question before committing to complex hardware - Document-driven handoffs: lean, direct writing; schematics, BOMs, and short reports that travel between team members - Physical intuition as a check: we sanity-check results against the physics, not just the math