Lead Engineer – Hardware (Avionics & Propulsion)

Team: Avionics & Propulsion | Location: Adibatla, Hyderabad

Employment Type: Full-time | Experience: 6+ years, incl. 2+ years leading

:

We are looking for a hands-on hardware lead to own the electronics that move our aircraft — battery management, motor controllers, and the high- and low-voltage power distribution that ties them together. You will lead a small team of hardware engineers while staying technically hands-on: setting the architecture, reviewing every schematic and layout the team releases, and being in the lab for bring-up and test. Roughly 40% of your week is your own design and review work; the rest is planning, unblocking the team, and driving the design towards a certifiable state.

The processes you write and the test capability you build will shape how BluJ develops hardware for years.

About BluJ:

BluJ Aero is formed with the vision of making Aviation 'Simpler & Sustainable'. We are working on cutting-edge Vertical Take-off and Landing (VTOL) technologies and aim to cut down travel time for cargo and humans significantly. We are looking for passionate and ambitious people to form our core foundation team.

Key Responsibilities:

Technical ownership

- Own the hardware architecture for propulsion and power distribution — battery management, motor controller / inverter, HV and LV distribution, contactors, pre-charge and protection — including the redundancy and isolation strategy that keeps a single component failure from causing loss of thrust.
- Personally design and review critical schematics and layouts, and act as the final reviewer for every board the team releases.
- Own the high-voltage design rules: creepage and clearance, insulation coordination, partial discharge at altitude, arc protection and touch safety.
- Own EMI/EMC strategy for switching power stages sharing an airframe with flight-critical avionics, designing for DO-160 Section 20/21 up front rather than chasing it later.
- Own thermal design with the mechanical team — loss budgets, cooling paths, derating over temperature and altitude — along with the mass, volume and efficiency budgets for your subsystems.
- Define the hardware–firmware interface with the embedded team: register maps, safety interlocks, fault reporting and bring-up support.

Process, safety and certification





- Drive requirements-based design with traceability from aircraft-level requirements to board-level verification evidence, through stage-gated reviews — architecture, schematic, layout, bring-up, qualification — with defined entry and exit criteria.
- Own FMEA/FMECA and single-point-of-failure analysis, feeding the results into the aircraft-level safety assessment.
- Build the certification pathway: environmental qualification planning to DO-160, design assurance practice informed by DO-254 and ARP4754A, and the evidence trail a regulator will ask for.
- Own hardware configuration management — revision control, ECO process, BOM discipline, and a component derating and preferred-parts standard.

Team and delivery

- Lead, mentor and grow a team of hardware engineers, and run design reviews that are both technically rigorous and safe to speak up in.
- Own timelines, resourcing and development risk; surface slips early with mitigation options rather than late with surprises.
- Plan and build out test capability — bench, dynamometer, HIL, battery cycling, environmental and load-bank infrastructure — so the team can verify claims instead of assuming them.
- Manage EMS and component suppliers: prototype and production readiness, first-article inspection, yield, lead times and obsolescence risk.
- Work across propulsion, avionics, structures, flight test and supply chain to land integrated deliverables on time.

Must-Have Qualifications:

- Bachelor's or master's degree in Electrical, Electronics or a related engineering discipline.
- 6+ years designing production electronic hardware, including 2+ years leading engineers or programs.
- End-to-end ownership of at least two power electronics or battery management boards taken from architecture through qualification and into production or flight.
- Strong high-voltage design experience (200 V+ DC bus): topology selection, switching device and magnetics sizing, gate drive, protection and isolation.




- Fluency with PCB design tools (Altium 365 or similar) and the credibility to review other engineers' schematics and layouts; experience defining PCB prototyping requirements and working with EMS partners for low-volume and production builds.
- Experience with microcontroller-based designs (TI, ADI, NXP, ST or similar) and interfaces such as PWM, ADC, CAN, I2C, SPI and UART.
- Requirements-based design and stage-wise documentation in a regulated industry — aerospace, automotive, rail or medical.
- Hands-on lab competence: you are comfortable at a bench with a scope, a load bank and a board that isn't working yet.

Nice to Have:

- eVTOL, UAV or hybrid-electric aircraft programs; FoC motor control and inverter design.
- Working knowledge of DO-160, DO-254, ARP4754A/ARP4761 or ISO 26262 functional safety.
- Simulation fluency (LTspice, PLECS, Simulink) used to narrow architecture choices quickly.
- Experience standing up a hardware team, lab or process from close to a blank slate. We appreciate people who lead by example, and who believe no task is too small to be done.

What Success Looks Like in the First Year:

By month 3 you know every board in the propulsion and power path and its weaknesses, and the team's review and release process is written down and in use. By month 6 a derating and preferred-parts standard is in place and the highest-risk subsystem has a revised architecture with a test plan behind it. By month 12 your subsystems have passed a defined qualification campaign, the team has grown, and hardware is no longer the critical path.

What We Offer:

Direct ownership of flight-critical systems on a clean-sheet aircraft. A collaborative and creative work environment where hardware decisions are made by the people closest to the hardware. Opportunities for professional growth and development.

A culture that values diversity and inclusion. The role combines desk work, lab and test-bench time, and on-site testing that may take place in various weather conditions; some travel is required for field testing and for work with partners and suppliers.

We thank all applicants for their interest, but only those selected for an interview will be contacted. BluJ Aero is an equal opportunity employer. We value diversity in our workforce and encourage applicants from all backgrounds to apply.

📌 Lead Engineer – Hardware (Avionics & Propulsion) (Hyderabad)
🏢 BluJ Aerospace Private
📍 Hyderabad