Electrical Engineering & Embedded Systems Intern

THE MISSION

ITERRA is building the system of record for low-altitude airspace. 

Above 400 feet, every aircraft is tracked, logged, and attributable. Transponders, flight plans, radar, ATC. Below it, nothing. No transponder mandate an adversary obeys, no log, no attribution. Every headline ends the same way: nobody could say what was in that airspace.

A record-keeper cannot be a participant in the fight it is recording. That is why we are passive, and it is not a limitation, it is the product.

WHAT WE ARE BUILDING

Passive, edge-native RF and electro-optical sensing that autonomously detects and classifies Group 1-3 UAS without relying on pre-loaded signature libraries. Fused on the device. No active emissions. No cloud dependency. Purpose-built for denied, degraded, intermittent, and limited (DDIL) environments where legacy radar and library-dependent sensors fail.

WHO WE ARE

Small team. High trust. No bureaucracy. No tourists. Only builders.

Field-tested, integrated with the command-and-control systems our customers already run, SDVOSB certified, and manufacturing on U.S. soil in Hatillo, Puerto Rico.

WHAT YOU OWN

Everything in the sensor runs on power you route and signals you keep clean. A Jetson, multiple software-defined radios, low-noise amplifiers, and cameras share one sealed box in Caribbean heat, on a mast, off a battery. You own the electrical side of that box, with your own dates, alongside the engineers. You report to the CTO.

• Power distribution and budget. From the source to every board: rails, regulation, protection, inrush, and a measured power budget per subsystem. You find out what the unit actually draws instead of trusting a datasheet.
• Field power. Battery sizing, charging, solar and vehicle power, runtime under real load and real temperature. A rig that dies four hours into an eight-hour collection is a failed rig.
• Bring-up and integration. Jetson carrier, SDR boards, LNAs, camera modules, GPS. You get them powered, talking, and stable, and you are the one who finds out why a board that worked yesterday does not today.
• Harnessing and connectors. RF cable runs, SMA, TNC and N-type selection, phase-matched lengths on direction-finding pairs, strain relief, service loops, and a harness a technician can replace in the field with gloves on.
• Noise and interference. Grounding, shielding, and layout discipline so the digital side does not desense the receiver. You measure the noise floor before and after, and you report both.
• Bench instrumentation. Oscilloscope, multimeter, power supply, electronic load, spectrum analyzer. Repeatable written procedure. If a result cannot be reproduced next month, it is not a result.
• Field support. You come to the range. You set up, you troubleshoot live, and you carry the gear.
• Documentation. Wiring diagrams, pinouts, power budgets, and a bring-up procedure someone else can follow without calling you.

The harness you build is the harness that goes on the mast. Nobody downstream second-guesses it. That is the weight of the seat.

HOW WE WORK

We are small, and we move at a pace that only a small team can. Engineering runs on two-week cycles against a single shared plan. Every seat, RF, mechanical, electrical, and software, owns a slice of the same rig and has to land its objectives on the same date the others do. An antenna that is finished three weeks before the enclosure is not finished. A mount that is finished after the field test is a failure.

You scope your own work, commit to dates, say early and loudly when a date is at risk, and integrate with the rest of the stack instead of handing over a part and walking away. Pace is a requirement of the seat, not a culture slogan, and it is the reason a company our size can put fielded hardware in front of a government customer.

WHAT WE REQUIRE

Pursuing or holding a B.S. in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field. This is an early-career seat and we expect to teach you things. What we cannot teach in six months is whether you build. Hands-on work counts wherever you did it: thesis, senior design, student competition, a personal project, or a bench in your apartment. We care that you have done it, not who paid you to.

• You have built something electrical and made it work. A board, a power supply, a robot, a drone, an instrumented project. Tell us what failed the first time, why, and what you changed. A project where everything worked tells us nothing.
• Circuit fundamentals, applied. DC and AC, power and thermal, regulation, grounding and return paths, decoupling. You reason about a circuit instead of looking it up mid-conversation.
• Bench hands. Oscilloscope, multimeter, bench supply, soldering iron. You can probe a live board and find the problem.
• Embedded comfort. Microcontroller or single-board computer work. Reading a datasheet, wiring a peripheral over I2C, SPI or UART, and getting it to respond. Python or C.
• Linux comfort. Shell, ssh, git. You can work on a headless machine without a GUI.
• Willing to be outside. Field days are part of this seat, not an exception to it.
• Juvempleo eligibility. Ages 18 to 29, Puerto Rico resident, U.S. citizen, minimum 2.00 GPA, recently graduated or about to graduate. Placement is made by DDEC, not by ITERRA alone.
• Method over conclusions. If the measurement says the product underperforms, we need to hear it from you first, and we will act on it, not argue with it.
• U.S. person under ITAR.
• Onsite in Hatillo, Puerto Rico, and in the field, outdoors, carrying gear.

Preferred: PCB design (KiCad, Altium, Eagle). RF cable and connector practice. Battery management and charging circuits. EMI and EMC basics. Power measurement and logging. Drone or UAS hands-on time. Clearance eligibility. Spanish.

WHAT WE OFFER

This seat is funded through Juvempleo, the Departamento de Desarrollo Economico y Comercio youth employment program. DDEC carries the wage. What ITERRA gives you is the work itself.

• $15.00 per hour, paid through Juvempleo. 950 hours, roughly six months.
• Real hardware from week one. You are not shadowing anybody. You get a slice of the rig, a date, and the same standard of review the engineers get.
• Direct access to the CTO and the founder. No layers. Your work is reviewed by the people who will ship it.
• Your work goes to the field. Whatever you build gets carried outside, mounted, and run against live targets while you are still here. Very few engineers get that before their first full-time job.
• A portfolio you can show anybody. Code, measurements, and a documented result you were responsible for, on a fielded defense system built in Puerto Rico.
• First look at a full-time seat. We hire from this bench. Performing here is the shortest path onto the payroll.

This position requires access to export-controlled information under ITAR (22 CFR 120-130). Applicants must be U.S. persons as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3).

ITERRA is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or veteran status.