Sr. Electrical Engineer in Santa Ana, California at Universal Electronics

Position Summary

The Sr. Electrical Engineer is a senior individual contributor who independently designs, develops, integrates, and validates electrical hardware for connected-home and consumer-electronics products. This position owns complex electrical design activities from requirements and system architecture through schematic capture, prototype bring-up, design verification, regulatory support, cost optimization, and transfer to high-volume production. The engineer works closely with software, mechanical, RF, test, applications, program management, sourcing, quality, and manufacturing teams across UEI locations and with customers and suppliers.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities
The duties listed below are intended only as examples of the various types of work that may be performed. The omission of specific statements of duties does not exclude them from the position if the work is similar, related or a logical assignment to this class.

Primary responsibilities include:
• Lead complex electrical hardware development for wireless control, smart-home, thermostat, sensing, and other embedded consumer-electronics products.
• Translate product and customer requirements into electrical system architectures, block diagrams, component-level schematics, design specifications, interface definitions, and electrical bills of material.
• Design and review digital, analog, mixed-signal, power-management, battery-powered, sensor, display, audio, infrared, and wireless-support circuitry as applicable to the product.
• Select and qualify components based on performance, cost, availability, lifecycle, reliability, regulatory, and manufacturability requirements; evaluate alternate and second-source components when needed.
• Guide PCB placement and routing, including signal integrity, power integrity, grounding, EMI/EMC, RF coexistence, antenna-interface, thermal, testability, and design-for-manufacturing considerations.
• Plan and execute prototype bring-up, debugging, characterization, design verification, tolerance analysis, worst-case analysis, and reliability testing using appropriate laboratory equipment.
• Diagnose complex product and system issues across hardware, firmware, software, RF, mechanical, manufacturing, and test boundaries; drive root-cause analysis and corrective actions to closure.
• Perform design reviews and provide clear technical recommendations, risk assessments, trade-off analyses, and documentation for project and business decisions.
• Support regulatory and product-safety certification activities, including test readiness, technical investigation, and resolution of compliance issues.
• Partner with global manufacturing and test engineering teams to define electrical test coverage, support pilot builds, resolve production issues, improve yield, and release designs into high-volume production.
• Collaborate with applications and program teams on customer RFQs, feasibility studies, technical responses, preliminary schematics, and BOM development when required.
• Provide technical guidance to other engineers and cross-functional team members; may lead the technical work of a project team without direct supervisory responsibility.
• Maintain accurate engineering records and release documentation in accordance with UEI development and change-control processes.
• Travel domestically or internationally as needed to support customers, suppliers, UEI engineering teams, certification activities, and manufacturing sites.

Supervisory Responsibilities – List Teams/Groups
• The engineer may serve as a technical or project lead and guide other engineers, technicians, and cross-functional team members.

Qualifications - Knowledge & Experience
• Minimum of 7 years of related electrical engineering experience developing embedded or consumer-electronics products.
• Demonstrated ability to work highly independently and solve complex technical and business problems with limited direction.
• Strong knowledge of circuit design, schematic capture, design optimization, design review, prototyping, electrical validation, reliability analysis, and requirements analysis.
• Hands-on experience with microcontrollers or application processors, memory, serial interfaces such as I2C, SPI and UART, USB, power supplies, battery systems, sensors, and mixed-signal circuitry.
• Experience using ECAD and engineering-analysis tools for schematic design, PCB collaboration, simulation, component research, and design documentation.
• Proficiency with laboratory equipment such as digital multimeters, oscilloscopes, power supplies, electronic loads, function generators, logic analyzers, spectrum analyzers, and network analyzers as applicable.
• Working knowledge of EMI/EMC, product safety, design for manufacturing, design for test, tolerance analysis, reliability, and high-volume product development.
• Experience with wireless technologies such as Bluetooth/BLE, Wi-Fi, Zigbee, Thread/Matter, sub-GHz RF, or Cellular is preferred.
• Ability to communicate complex technical information clearly to engineering and non-engineering audiences, including customers, suppliers, and global teams.
• Strong analytical, organizational, collaboration, documentation, and problem-solving skills.

Education, Licenses & Certification
• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering or a closely related engineering discipline from an accredited college or university is required.
• Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering or a related discipline is preferred.

Work Conditions
• 40 hours plus per week.
• Work is performed in an office, electronics laboratory, and occasionally a manufacturing or customer environment.
• Frequent use of a computer and engineering software; regular hands-on work with electronic assemblies, prototypes, test fixtures, and laboratory equipment.
• Ability to travel as needed and to perform the essential functions.

Compensation and Benefits Disclosure

In accordance with pay transparency laws in the State of California, UEI provides a good-faith compensation range for this position which the company reasonably expects to pay upon hire, based on good-faith and reasonable estimate at the time of posting. The final compensation within this range will depend on the candidate’s qualifications, education, training, experience and location. In addition to the compensation, UEI offers comprehensive health and welfare as well as retirement plan benefits which are not reflected in the pay range above.