Lead Power Electronics Engineer

Job Description

Yaskawa - Solectria Solar is America's leading manufacturer of high power photovoltaic inverters for solar applications. Join a driven and innovative team working in a fast paced and challenging high technology environment. Let your talent fuel one of the nation's fastest growing industries. We offer an excellent benefit package, the ability to work with cutting edge technology, and room for professional growth and career advancement within the company. Yaskawa - Solectria Solar is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

DUTIES :

1. Responsible to provide design leadership and technical expertise throughout the full life cycle development of high powered PV inverters and associated projects

2. The Lead Power Electronics Engineer and their team must be capable of driving hard to solve field and design issues causing customer dissatisfaction

3. Recommend and implement new features, modifications and upgrades to existing products in order to improve reliability and the customer experience

4. Plan and execute root cause analysis of failures and timely execution of appropriate reaction plans

5. Coordinate directly between hardware, embedded software, application software, quality, reliability, and manufacturing teams to understand, correct, and eliminate complex electronics failure modes

6. Schedule work assignments and communicate priorities to meet design and business goals

7. Design for cost targets, design for test and manufacturability

8. Printed Circuit Board designs for high reliability, cost sensitive products

9. Provide outstanding documentation of hardware designs

10. Working with High voltage / high power circuits using best practices for safety

11. Mentor less experienced team members in engineering principles and management, oversee

detailed technical and safety training of employees

12. Effectively manage changes using internal processes such as ECO's, Deviations, etc.

13. Additional duties may be assigned, as business circumstances require

REQUIREMENTS :

Engineering Skills / Knowledge / Abilities :

1. The candidate should be a results-oriented team player who leads by example, takes ownership,

and champions process improvement initiatives

2. Expert power electronics design background :

a. Power semiconductor implementation, design for efficiency, and protection.

b. Must understand the fundamentals of PWM controlled power electronics.

Implementation experience with buck, boost, flyback, and inverter power sections

is expected.

c. Experience with high efficiency power stages, soft switching topologies.

3. CPU based systems, with significant digital circuitry such as communications, memory, and I / O.

4. Deep knowledge of circuit analysis and simulation to ensure design margin and reliability.

5. Design background in harsh, electrically noisy environments.

6. Knowledge of Electrical safety standards, EMI / EMC and Environmental compliance.

7. Experience in design for long life and high MTBF.

8. Significant electronic circuit design, including Processor based systems, Communications

interfaces, OpAmps, Filters, Isolation, Circuit protection, voltage regulation and conversion.

9. Knowledge of mechanical / thermal / packaging design for industrial electronics.

10. Extensive experience in design of electronics based systems, including schematics, circuit

simulation, PCB layout, testing, and troubleshooting skills.

11. Expertise in communications hardware layers of Wireless Ethernet, Wired Ethernet, CAN, SPI,

and RS-485.

12. Significant experience with circuit board design, including : Altium (or equivalent) design

software, IPC rules and guidelines, PCB design for test, and PCB design for manufacturing.

13. Direct experience with safe operation and testing of high power (up to 1.5MW) and high voltage

up to 600VAC, 1500VDC) equipment.

14. Ability to understand complex designs and failure modes with software / hardware interactions.

15. Background in embedded C programming is a plus.

16. Experience in PV system design is a big plus.

17. Product agency certification for UL, CE, FCC, etc. is a big plus.

Business / Personal Skills :

1. Rapid product development, while maintaining high quality results.

2. Outstanding work ethic and positive attitude required.

3. Strong sense of schedule driven design, meeting cost targets, NRE decisions, feature / effort trade efforts, and design for manufacturing.

4. A high level of initiative and a proactive nature, good communication skills and strong organizational and time management skills.

5. Ability to support creation of schedules and work estimations for complex power electronics projects.

6. Fluency in written and spoken English is essential.

7. Ability to work as a leader or individual contributor, depending upon assignment.

8. Willingness to travel up to 10% of the time.

9. Project management skills, project planning, schedule creation and maintenance

Education / Experience :

• BSEE, BSSE, BSCE with 7 or more years' relevant experience. OR
• MS with 5 or more years' relevant experience. OR
• PH.D with 3 or more years' relevant experience