Entrylevel Operations Engineer Jobs in Montebello, CA

Who we are

Picogrid is a leading venture-backed defense technology company founded to bridge the decades-long gap between modern technology and the critical demands of national security. Today, we're building the essential infrastructure to unify sensors, autonomy, and operators with our technology deployed in active operations around the world. Our mission is to deliver an operational advantage to secure the United States and its allies.

As an Entry-Level Electrical Engineer at Picogrid, you will design, build, and test our hardware product lineup. This is a hands‑on hardware engineering role at our headquarters in El Segundo, CA for an Electrical Engineer that loves design and wants to work on exciting projects.

You will work in a small team to develop new hardware from concept through production. The role is primarily focused on PCB design, but ultimately spans many areas of electrical engineering, including embedded systems, power electronics, battery systems, sensors, compute, communications interfaces, mixed‑signal circuits, validation, and manufacturing support. Understand that part of working in a small hardware team means that day-to-day work tends to vary greatly. The benefit of this is that there’s always something new to do and learn about.

We are looking for someone who is early in their career but has reasonable design experience, as a hobbyist if not as a professional. You should be curious, resourceful, and comfortable working through ambiguity. You should be able to utilize datasheets, reference designs, prior examples, test equipment, teammates, and targeted questions to keep making progress.

This role is a good fit for someone who wants to learn quickly, take ownership, and grow into an engineer who can independently own electrical designs end to end. More than any specific competencies or experiences we want a candidate that is excited to start designing and can deliver results with few technical guardrails, and will give the task their focus, energy, and dedication.

• Own electrical design tasks and small‑to‑medium hardware projects from initial concept through schematic capture, PCB layout, bring‑up, verification & validation, documentation, and release.
• Design and iterate on PCBs for embedded, compute, sensor, power, and communications subsystems.
• Bring up new boards, validate functionality, debug hardware issues, and communicate findings clearly to the rest of the engineering team.
• Assist in research, testing, validation, and failure analysis for other engineers’ designs.
• Work with embedded software, mechanical engineering, manufacturing, and operations teams to integrate electrical designs into complete systems.
• Create and maintain engineering documentation, including design notes, bring‑up procedures, test reports, validation checklists, and revision history.

• 1-2 years of professional electrical engineering, hardware engineering, or closely related experience. Strong project, research, internship, student team, startup, or personal hardware experience may be able to substitute for professional experience. Candidates with additional relevant experience may also be considered.
• Experience with schematic capture and PCB layout in at least one EDA tool. KiCad experience is slightly preferred.
• Demonstrated experience designing, building, testing, debugging, or documenting electrical systems.
• Strong electrical engineering fundamentals including circuit analysis, component behavior, digital interfaces, power design basics, and practical lab/debug skills.
• Ability to read datasheets, identify important test points, and reason through expected electrical behavior.
• Hands‑on experience using common electronics lab equipment such as oscilloscopes, multimeters, logic analyzers, and power supplies.
• Experienced with SMD and THT soldering techniques, some experience with soldering 0603 and smaller components is preferred.
• Basic embedded systems familiarity, such as working with microcontrollers, simple firmware, scripts, digital interfaces, or hardware/software bring‑up.
• Ability to work through ambiguity, break down technical problems, identify useful next steps, and ask clear questions when additional context is needed.
• Strong written and verbal communication, especially when documenting design decisions, test results, blockers, and recommended next steps.

• Experience designing custom PCBs and debugging issues across power, digital, analog, and embedded interfaces.
• Familiarity with common communication interfaces such as UART, SPI, I2C, USB, Ethernet, CAN, or PCIe.
• Some competency with mechanical design with Onshape or similar is preferred.
• Experience writing hardware validation plans, bring‑up procedures, test reports, or failure analysis notes.
• Experience designing for manufacturability, assembly, testability, reliability, and serviceability.
• A strong sense of embedded systems design is preferred.
• Experience moving quickly in a resource‑constrained environment, whether through a startup, student engineering team, research lab, open‑source project, or ambitious personal project.

• Base salary range: $110,000 - $150,000 per year. Base salary is just one part of your total compensation package at Picogrid.
• Significant stock options with a high potential upside as an early‑stage company
• 401(k) with employer matching
• Full health coverage, including medical, dental, and vision insurance
• Relocation assistance provided, if applicable
• Unlimited PTO, with a two‑week minimum, and 11 paid holidays per year
• Paid parental leave for both parents
• Up to two meals per day provided when working in‑office
• Free EV charging at the HQ
• Unique office in El Segundo, CA stocked with quality coffee, snacks, and wine/beer

To conform to U.S. Government export regulations, applicant must be a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful, permanent resident, also known as a green card holder, (iii) Refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or (iv) Asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, or be eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.

Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Policy

Picogrid is committed to providing a professional work environment free from discrimination, harassment, and retaliation. We are an equal opportunity employer and make all employment decisions based on merit, qualifications, and business needs.