Power Electronics Validation Engineer

Heron Power•Scotts Valley, CA

1d•$130,000 - $200,000

About The Position

Uptime, availability, and reliability are critical to our converters (inverters & rectifiers) that connect large-scale renewables, storage, and high-power loads (e.g., data centers) to the grid. Our team focuses on delivering a deep, physics-based understanding of our systems from architecture to field, enabling designs that are reliable, safe, and high performing. We unite systems engineering, modeling, reliability, testing, and failure analysis into a single team that partners with design engineering. We collaborate on the deepest technical questions by challenging assumptions. As a Power Electronics Validation Engineer, you will own the technical thread that turns “a set of subsystems” into “a robust product.” You’ll define and drive system requirements, interfaces, and verification plans, then execute the integration strategy through hands-on bring-up and rigorous testing across all phases of development. You’ll be a key partner to electrical and mechanical design, firmware, controls and reliability teams—driving root cause for failures found in the lab or in the field and ensuring fixes are validated and regression-proof. If you are the person who thrives on creating clarity from ambiguity and can transform chaos into a repeatable playbook—this role will feel like home.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Mechatronics, Systems Engineering, or a related field.
Experience in systems integration, bring-up, testing, or related work on complex electrical systems (power electronics strongly preferred).
Demonstrated ownership across a meaningful chunk of a product lifecycle (prototype → iteration → validation, or development → field issues → corrective actions).
Strong fundamentals across power, controls/embedded behavior, and system-level interfaces (electrical, thermal, mechanical boundaries).
Hands-on integration/debugging experience (instrumentation, logs/telemetry, firmware interaction, CAN or similar comms).

Nice To Haves

Experience in product development of grid-tied inverters / PCS / medium-voltage systems.
Familiarity with power system modeling, operation, and common protection techniques.
Knowledge of reliability engineering principles (Weibull analysis, derating, ALT/HALT).
Experience building automated test coverage / regression frameworks (Python or similar).

Responsibilities

Conduct system-level design & analysis for power electronics-based converters connected to the Medium Voltage grid and DC sources/loads.
Derive requirements and challenge them to simplify designs; drive design reviews, interface definitions, and verification planning tied to real success criteria.
Own the path to integration: define success criteria, track requirements-to-test traceability, and plan staged integration (subsystem → system → production/field).
Partner tightly with electrical/firmware/mechanical/manufacturing/reliability teams to guide designs from concept to qualified, production-capable systems—and to remove friction from iteration loops.
Develop, review, and execute comprehensive test plans for development, integration, verification, and validation testing across all integration stages—subsystem to complete system.
Design and build test setups and tooling (e.g., grid simulators, load banks, battery emulators/DC sources, thermal/environmental setups, DAQ/instrumentation) to enable fast learning loops and repeatable validation.
Act as the technical lead for troubleshooting and root-causing during lab bring-up, integration testing and field trials; drive structured root cause + corrective action and verify the fix really sticks.
Own test documentation and automation: test stand specification, procedures, test flows, logging, and data analysis workflows.
Build the regression story: what do we test every build, every firmware release, every engineering change—so we don’t re-learn the same lessons.
Build and maintain processes and tooling for integration issue tracking, triage, and closure (including regression gates, release readiness, and configuration discipline).
Maintain the system architecture view: interface control, configuration control/versioning, safety/compliance evidence, and test traceability across product iterations.
Support field feedback loops: reproduce issues quickly, instrument the system, isolate root cause, and close the loop with design + manufacturing test.