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.