Master Electrical Engineer

About Ardent

We are building the flying car. The next generation of great companies will deliver on the sci-fi promises of the mid-20th century, and personal aviation remains conspicuously unfinished. Aviation went from twelve seconds over the dunes at Kitty Hawk to supersonic flight in a single man's lifetime. Then progress in personal aviation ground to a halt. Ardent is reconsidering the aircraft from first principles: distributed electric propulsion designed to accommodate inevitable failures, hydrocarbon energy for useful range, and relentless simplicity to make the product affordable. Electricity should move the aircraft. Fuel should carry the energy.

Our path begins with the simplest aircraft capable of proving that architecture, progresses through unmanned applications, and leads to a two-seat aircraft that people buy because they want to go somewhere. Each step must compound toward the same goal: a flying car that clearly wins against the car on meaningful trips. We will build, fly, break things, and let reality and rapidly developed test data be the final arbiter. The measure of success is miles flown that otherwise would have been driven—and, eventually, journeys that used to be impractical. The automobile radically expanded the geographic and economic radius of human life. Personal aviation will do it again.

About the role

Own the electrical architecture that makes Ardent's aircraft work. We are looking for an exceptional hands-on engineer who can move from system architecture to a schematic, a harness, and a test stand. Distributed electric propulsion only delivers its promise if the electrical system preserves that distribution when something fails. Your job is to make the power and avionics architecture simple, understandable, and tolerant of the failures we should expect in a real aircraft.

What you will do

• Own the aircraft electrical architecture across energy storage, generation interfaces, power distribution, motor controllers, avionics power, grounding.
• Define power budgets, electrical interfaces, protection, isolation, and fault responses. Identify common-cause failures and prevent a local fault from taking down the aircraft.
• Design and bring up custom electronics where needed, and select commercial hardware where it is the better answer. Own schematics, board reviews, harness requirements, and interface documentation.
• Integrate motors, inverters, batteries, battery management, sensors, flight computers, and generator controls with the propulsion and flight controls teams.
• Build and instrument test setups. Verify behavior under realistic loads, transients, electrical noise, thermal limits, and injected faults.
• Lead electrical troubleshooting through bench tests, ground runs, and flight-test support. Turn failures into documented design changes and repeatable verification.
• Set the electrical engineering standard as the team grows, including design review, configuration control, test evidence, and practical manufacturing documentation.

What you bring

• A substantial record of designing, building, and debugging electrical systems that operate in demanding physical environments.
• Depth in power electronics and distribution, embedded electronics, mixed-signal design, and electrical system integration. You know where your expertise ends and bring in help early.
• Experience with fault analysis, protection coordination, grounding, electromagnetic interference, and safe work around high-energy electrical systems.
• Strong bench skills and the ability to reason from measurements when the hardware disagrees with the model.
• Ability to own technical decisions across disciplines while remaining personally involved in design and testing.

Useful experience

Experience with electric aircraft, hybrid powertrains, motor drives, battery systems, redundant avionics, environmental qualification, or taking hardware from prototype to production.

What success looks like

The aircraft has a coherent electrical architecture, verified fault responses, and hardware the team can build and troubleshoot. Power-system failures are understood and contained rather than discovered by surprise in flight.