Embedded Systems Validation Engineer (Hardware)

Heron Power•Scotts Valley, CA

1d•$130,000 - $200,000

About The Position

Heron Power is a startup company building cutting-edge power electronics for the 21st-century grid. We aim to de-bottleneck the growth of electricity generation and consumption with scalable, innovative, and less costly hardware solutions, accelerating the electrification of everything. Our first goal is to build better converters (inverters & rectifiers) to connect large-scale renewables, storage, and loads to the grid. Heron’s leadership team is made up of seasoned veterans who have designed and shipped gigawatts of power conversion products over the past decade. We understand that no one individual knows everything. We will all learn a lot together and from each other. We strive to build a collaborative, enriching environment conducive to personal, technical, and career growth. You can expect to work in a dynamic environment, driven by first principles engineering, solving difficult problems—with a strong bias toward hands-on execution and learning by doing. Job Overview 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 Embedded Systems Validation Engineer (Hardware), you will own the technical thread that turns “a set of low-voltage subsystems” into “a robust, shippable product.” Your scope is the low-voltage nervous system of our converters: controller and interface electronics, sensing and signal conditioning, comms networks, Low Voltage power distribution, interlocks, thermal system fans, and harnessing. You’ll define and drive the system requirements, interfaces, and verification plans, then execute the integration strategy through hands-on bring-up and rigorous testing across all phases of development. Your work creates the playbook for how we integrate, validate, debug, and productionize the low-voltage electronics without re-learning the same lessons each build. You’ll be a key partner to electrical design, firmware/controls, and reliability teams driving the 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, Computer Engineering, Mechatronics, Systems Engineering, or a related field.
Experience in systems integration, bring-up, validation, or test of low-voltage electronics in complex products (embedded systems strongly preferred).
Demonstrated ownership across a meaningful chunk of a product lifecycle (prototype → iteration → validation, or development → field issues → corrective actions).
Strong fundamentals across embedded behavior and system interfaces: sensors, signal conditioning, I/O, power distribution, grounding/shielding, and comms networks (CAN, Ethernet, RS-485, SPI/I2C, etc.).
Hands-on integration/debugging experience (instrumentation, logs/telemetry, firmware interaction, logic analyzers/scopes, CAN or similar comms tools).
Ability to move between high-level architecture definition and lab-level hands-on test execution.
Comfortable driving cross-functional decisions with incomplete information—using experiments to de-risk.

Nice To Haves

Experience with HIL/SIL, automated regression frameworks, and test-driven validation culture.
Experience designing or validating harnessing, connector systems, EMC/EMI robustness, and system observability.
Familiarity with safety interlocks, fault handling, and reliability practices for embedded control systems.
Experience building automated test coverage / regression frameworks (Python or similar).

Responsibilities

Conduct system-level design & analysis for the low-voltage electronics architecture that enables safe, reliable operation of grid-tied converters (control boards, IO, sensors, comms, interlocks, LV power distribution).
Derive requirements and challenge them to simplify designs; drive design reviews, interface definitions (electrical + logical), 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 (component/board → subsystem → full system → production/field).
Own and maintain “interface truth”: pinouts, signal integrity assumptions, grounding/shielding intent, network specs, harness and pinout specifications,
Partner tightly with electrical/firmware/mechanical/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 across all integration stages—board bring-up to full-system validation.
Design and build test setups, integration bucks and tooling for LV electronics validation: harness test fixtures, simulated sensors and loads, HIL/SIL setups where needed, implement fault-injection capabilities, comms/network test tools, and automated regression stands.
Act as the technical lead for troubleshooting and root-causing during 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.
Maintain the low-voltage 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.