Battery Test Engineer - Aeromechanical

Pivotal•Palo Alto, CA

7d•$135,000 - $155,000•Onsite

About The Position

Pivotal is seeking a hands-on Battery Test Engineer for its Battery Engineering team. The role owns the design and execution of battery performance characterization, thermal-runaway, abuse, environmental, and durability testing. The engineer translates system risks and requirements into safe, instrumented, repeatable tests at cell and pack levels, then turns results into defensible engineering evidence and actionable design improvements. The position is onsite at Pivotal’s headquarters in Palo Alto, California.

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 hardware, instrumentation, wiring, communications, and data-quality issues in a laboratory.
Ability to work onsite and safely support physically hands-on test setup and execution.
Must be eligible 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.

Responsibilities

Own test planning and hands-on execution for lithium-ion cells and aircraft battery packs.
Plan and execute electrical and thermal performance characterization of cell candidates and prototype packs, including capacity, DCIR, power capability, mission-profile cycling, and thermal response across temperature.
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 fabricating test articles, triggers, fixtures, and appropriate instrumentation.
Develop environmental and durability tests covering temperature, thermal cycling, altitude or low-pressure exposure, humidity, vibration, mechanical shock, and transportation conditions as applicable.
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 teams, and external laboratories.
Execute testing safely, monitor tests 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 capabilities.
Author test plans, procedures, reports, nonconformance records, root-cause assessments, and design recommendations.
Support model correlation and collaborate with design engineers to improve containment, cooling, sensing, venting, and protection strategies.
Manage external test laboratories, including statement-of-work development, 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.