HARJIT CHAHAL
Saildrone
San Francisco,CA
1
Certification
6
years of professional experience
Senior Electrical Engineer with 6+ years of experience developing and sustaining hardware products from concept through production across medical devices, industrial systems, and RF-enabled IoT products. Bring deep expertise in hardware development, multi-layer PCB design, EMI/EMC, power architecture, and cross-functional system integration, with hands-on experience supporting product validation, certification, manufacturing, and sustaining engineering. Looking to bring this technical foundation into a Product Engineering role with broader ownership across product development, manufacturing, and the full product lifecycle, while balancing technical performance, reliability, manufacturability, cost, and supply-chain requirements.
Work History
Senior Electrical Engineer
3 Months- Support electrical product development from design through integration and production, balancing performance, reliability, manufacturability, cost, and schedule.
- Develop electrical hardware for autonomous maritime platforms in collaboration with mechanical, firmware, manufacturing, and cross-functional engineering teams.
- Designed PCBA hardware supporting radio functionality on an i.MX8-based platform, coordinating hardware interfaces and integration requirements across engineering teams.
- Designed a communication bridge between system subsystems utilizing Ethernet and CAN interfaces to support reliable product operation.
- Perform board-level debug and failure analysis of field-returned hardware using oscilloscopes, power analyzers, and DMMs, identifying root causes and driving corrective actions.
- Identify and qualify alternate components to mitigate supply-chain constraints, evaluating technical compatibility, availability, cost, and integration impacts while maintaining product continuity.
- Migrated engineering repositories from SVN to Altium 365 and initiated component-library standardization to improve design-release processes and engineering efficiency.
- Autonomous Maritime Defense and Ocean Intelligence
Senior Electrical Test Engineer
5 Months- Executed electrical validation of wearable PCBAs across four hardware builds, verifying product performance against electrical specifications using automated test frameworks.
- Performed board-level debug and failure analysis using oscilloscopes, power analyzers, and DMMs, identifying 5+ critical anomalies and driving corrective actions.
- Developed and executed electrical test procedures to characterize hardware performance across multiple development builds.
- Documented failure modes and communicated technical findings to hardware and firmware teams to support design improvements and verification milestones.
- Collaborated with cross-functional engineering teams to distinguish hardware, firmware, and integration issues during product validation.
- Wearable Devices, Electrical V&V
Electrical Engineer
1 Year 8 Months- Owned electrical development and sustaining engineering for 5+ production PCBAs, supporting products from design and prototype through validation, production release, and field support.
- Led hardware development of a next-generation IoT product integrating acoustic modem, Iridium satellite, LoRa, GPS, MCU, power, and communication subsystems into a production-ready PCBA.
- Designed and validated power-management, MCU, load-switching, and serial communication circuits while balancing performance, thermal constraints, signal integrity, and manufacturability.
- Led FCC EMI/EMC certification activities for two products, identifying and resolving hardware issues required for regulatory compliance and production release.
- Designed production test boards and authored manufacturing test procedures to support electrical verification and production quality.
- Collaborated with mechanical and firmware teams to resolve design-for-manufacturing, integration, and production issues throughout development.
- Managed hardware releases, component libraries, and engineering documentation within Duro PLM.
- Migrated 5+ legacy production designs from OrCAD to Altium, standardizing the electrical design environment and improving maintainability of released products.
- Smart Fishing / IoT Technology
Staff Electrical Engineer
2 Years 1 Month- Owned electrical subsystems for Class II medical devices from concept through prototype, verification, production release, and sustaining engineering within regulated design controls.
- Designed and released power regulation, analog sensing, level shifting, and serial communication circuitry for production medical devices.
- Led EMI/EMC troubleshooting and root-cause analysis, implementing hardware and layout changes that enabled products to achieve regulatory compliance.
- Managed component obsolescence and supply-chain disruptions by identifying, evaluating, and qualifying drop-in replacements and implementing required schematic and layout changes to maintain production continuity.
- Collaborated with manufacturing, mechanical, firmware, and quality teams to resolve production issues and implement hardware changes throughout the product lifecycle.
- Built and maintained a shared component library on Concord Pro, improving component standardization, design reuse, and release consistency across the electrical engineering team.
- Medical Aesthetics Devices
Electrical Engineer
1 Year 4 Months- Led electrical development of smart display products from schematic through prototype, validation, and production release.
- Integrated AC/DC power, EMC filtering, RS232/485 communication, ESP32 wireless control, and peripheral interfaces into production hardware.
- Designed custom production-test hardware for client-specific peripherals, enabling automated manufacturing verification.
- Performed analog and digital signal analysis and root-cause investigations of field failures, implementing corrective actions to improve product reliability.
- Collaborated with engineering and manufacturing teams to prototype, debug, and transition hardware into production.
- Smart Display Solutions
Education
B.S. - Bioengineering, Bio-Electronic Concentration, Minor in Electrical Engineering
Skills
Product Development: New Product Introduction (NPI)
Design for Manufacturability (DFM)
Production Test
Sustaining Engineering
Hardware Validation
Root-Cause Analysis
Failure Analysis
Component Qualification
Supply-Chain Risk Mitigation
Product Lifecycle Management
Electrical Engineering: Schematic Capture
Multi-layer PCB Design
PCB Layout
Power Architecture
Analog/Digital Circuits
Serial Communications
EMI/EMC
Signal Integrity
Hardware Prototyping
Board Rework
Tools: Altium
Altium 365
OrCAD
KiCad
Concord Pro
Duro PLM
Arena PLM
Jira
Trello
Oscilloscopes
Logic Analyzers
Spectrum Analyzers
Power Analyzers
Programming: C/C++
Python
Verilog
Arduino; able to interpret and review embedded firmware for hardware debugging and product integration
Certification
Mechanical Design for EMC — Silent Solutions LLC, Advanced PCB Design for EMC & SI — Silent Solutions LLC, Applying Practical EMI Design & Troubleshooting Techniques — Silent Solutions LLC
Timeline
Senior Electrical Engineer
Saildrone
05.2026 - CurrentRead More
Senior Electrical Test Engineer
Andrews Cooper, on assignment at Meta
12.2025 - 05.2026Read More
Electrical Engineer
Blue Ocean Gear
02.2024 - 10.2025Read More
Staff Electrical Engineer
Cutera
11.2021 - 12.2023Read More
Electrical Engineer
Amulet Technologies
07.2020 - 11.2021Read More
University of California
B.S. from Bioengineering, Bio-Electronic Concentration, Minor in Electrical Engineering
Read More