Hardware Electronics Engineer (UAV) in Leerdam, Nederland

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.