Senior Battery Systems Simulation & Validation Engineer

Pivotal•Palo Alto, CA

2d•Onsite

About The Position

The Battery Engineering team at Pivotal is seeking a Senior Battery Systems Simulation & Validation Engineer to develop predictive battery models, define verification strategies, and correlate analytical results with laboratory and flight-test data. This role will support cell and pack development for electric aircraft and will work across battery, aeromechanical, electrical, systems, manufacturing and flight-test teams.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Mechanical, Aerospace, Electrical, Chemical Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
Five or more years of relevant experience in battery modeling, simulation, validation, testing, or system development.
Experience developing equivalent-circuit and thermal models of lithium-ion cells and packs.
Strong understanding of lithium-ion cell behavior, heat transfer, battery-pack operation, and test-data interpretation.
Experience developing and validating engineering models against measured data.
Proficiency with MATLAB, Python, Simulink, or comparable engineering analysis tools.
Experience with CFD, thermal-network modeling, electrothermal modeling, or multiphysics tools such as STAR-CCM+, ANSYS, Simcenter, or COMSOL.
Experience defining verification activities and producing clear technical documentation.
Strong analytical, troubleshooting, and cross-functional communication skills.

Nice To Haves

Experience with electric aircraft, electric vehicles, UAVs, aerospace systems, or other high-power battery applications.
Experience with battery-aging, degradation, state-estimation, or mission-performance models.
Exposure to battery abuse testing, thermal-runaway analysis, and propagation-mitigation concepts.
Familiarity with aerospace verification, environmental qualification, requirements management, and configuration control.
Experience with high-voltage battery systems and battery-management-system data.

Responsibilities

Develop and maintain cell and pack-level thermal, electrical, and performance models.
Simulate charging, discharging, heat generation, cooling, environmental exposure, aging, and off-nominal operating conditions.
Evaluate battery performance across ambient-temperature extremes, solar loading, rapid charging, ground turnaround, and representative flight missions.
Plan model-correlation activities and use bench, environmental, and flight-test data to improve model accuracy and engineering confidence.
Define verification methods, and evidence for battery-system requirements.
Define performance test objectives, test profiles, and acceptance criteria in partnership with the test team.
Author and review engineering analyses, verification plans, test plans, test reports, and technical decision records.
Support pack-architecture trades involving cell selection, packaging, cooling approaches, venting, sensing, and protection features.
Analyze battery degradation, state of charge, state of health, energy capability, power capability, and thermal margins.
Partner with the Battery Management System, electrical, and software teams on models, interfaces, diagnostics, and data quality.
Partner with mechanical engineers on thermal-management design, structural interfaces, installation constraints, and aircraft integration.
Identify technical risks early and recommend practical mitigation, validation, or redesign actions.
Improve reusable simulation, data-processing, requirements-traceability, and verification workflows.