Battery Test Engineer - Aeromechanical

Pivotal•Palo Alto, CA

5d•Onsite

About The Position

Pivotal is seeking a hands-on Battery Test Engineer for its Battery Engineering team. The engineer will own the design and execution of battery performance characterization, thermal-runaway, abuse, environmental, and durability testing. The role translates system risks and requirements into safe, instrumented, repeatable tests at the cell and pack levels, and turns test results into defensible engineering evidence and actionable design improvements. The engineer works with lithium-ion cells and aircraft battery packs, operating test equipment and developing test plans, procedures, reports, and recommendations. The position also supports simulation correlation, battery design improvements, external laboratory programs, transportation and environmental compliance testing, and safe, traceable laboratory operations. This is an onsite position at Pivotal’s headquarters in Palo Alto, California. Applicants must be eligible for employment in the United States.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical, Aerospace, Electrical, or Chemical Engineering, Materials Science, or a related technical field.
Three or more years of hands-on battery, environmental, abuse, reliability, or aerospace hardware testing experience.
Experience designing instrumented tests and selecting thermocouples, voltage and current measurement, pressure sensing, thermal imaging, and data-acquisition hardware.
Working knowledge of lithium-ion battery hazards, high-voltage safety, stored-energy hazards, fire risk, and safe test operations.
Experience developing test fixtures, procedures, hazard controls, and technical reports.
Ability to troubleshoot laboratory hardware, instrumentation, wiring, communications, and data-quality issues.
Ability to work onsite and safely support physically hands-on test setup and execution.
Eligibility for employment in the United States.

Nice To Haves

Experience conducting or witnessing battery thermal-runaway, propagation, overcharge, external heating, short-circuit, crush, or penetration testing.
Experience with environmental chambers, vibration systems, thermal cycling, altitude chambers, shock testing, and high-power battery pack cyclers (e.g., Chroma) or cell cyclers (e.g., Biologic, Arbin).
Experience with electric aircraft, EV, UAV, aerospace, defense, or other safety-critical energy systems.
Familiarity with UN 38.3 and relevant battery or aerospace environmental-test standards, with judgment to confirm applicability before defining a compliance plan.
Experience with LabVIEW, Python, MATLAB, Dewesoft, NI hardware, or comparable data-acquisition and analysis environments.
Experience with fire-safe test cells, exhaust and gas handling, remote monitoring, blast or fragment protection, and emergency-response coordination.
Experience managing outside laboratories and reviewing supplier test evidence.
Strong laboratory and test-floor mindset, with personal ownership of safe execution and high-quality data.
Ability to balance urgency with disciplined readiness reviews, hazard controls, and configuration management.
Ability to turn requirements or failure concerns into practical test methods, fixtures, procedures, and evidence packages.
Communicates unexpected results quickly and objectively and helps the team turn failures into design learning.

Responsibilities

Own test planning and hands-on execution for lithium-ion cells and aircraft battery packs.
Plan and conduct electrical and thermal performance characterization of cell candidates and prototype packs, including capacity, DCIR, power capability, mission-profile cycling, and thermal response across temperatures.
Operate high-power battery cyclers, cell cyclers, and environmental chambers; maintain test profiles, data pipelines, and test-article configuration records.
Deliver correlation-ready datasets to the simulation team and support model-versus-test comparisons.
Design, build, and execute thermal-runaway initiation, propagation, containment, venting, and mitigation tests, including fabrication of test articles, trigger methods, fixtures, and instrumentation.
Develop environmental and durability tests covering applicable temperature, thermal cycling, altitude or low-pressure exposure, humidity, vibration, mechanical shock, and transportation conditions.
Define test objectives, hazards, instrumentation needs, data-acquisition architecture, trigger logic, sampling rates, acceptance criteria, and stop conditions.
Prepare test articles, fixtures, chambers, power equipment, cooling systems, sensors, high-speed video, thermal imaging, and data-acquisition systems.
Lead test readiness reviews, job-hazard analyses, emergency planning, exclusion-zone definition, and coordination with EHS, facilities, fire safety, and external laboratories.
Execute tests safely, monitor them in real time, respond to anomalies, and protect personnel, facilities, test assets, and data integrity.
Analyze temperature, voltage, current, pressure, gas, flame, ejecta, and propagation behavior as applicable to test objectives and facility capability.
Author test plans, procedures, reports, nonconformance records, root-cause assessments, and design recommendations.
Support model correlation and work with design engineers to improve containment, cooling, sensing, venting, and protection strategies.
Manage external test laboratories, including statements of work, setup reviews, witnessing, data acceptance, and issue resolution.
Maintain calibrated instrumentation, safe lab practices, test configuration control, data traceability, and lessons learned.
Support transportation and environmental compliance test programs, including UN 38.3 activities when applicable to the product and program phase.