Senior R&D Engineer, Space PV Product Design & Prototyping

Tandem PV•Fremont, CA

16d

About The Position

As a Senior R&D Engineer, Space PV Product Design & Prototyping, you will turn our perovskite cell technology into prototype space power products: lightweight, flexible photovoltaic modules and test articles for spacecraft, where the figure of merit is watts per kilogram rather than watts per square meter. You will own the product design, from module layout and electrical architecture through the laminate stack, interconnects, mounting and terminations, and you will build, test and iterate prototypes hands-on with our technicians and process team. You will also be the technical interface to component suppliers and to the external partners who perform environmental testing on your designs.

Requirements

5+ years of hands-on hardware or product design experience, including building and testing prototypes).
Degree in mechanical, electrical, aerospace or materials engineering, applied physics, or equivalent hands-on experience.
Demonstrated design ownership of electromechanical or photovoltaic hardware from concept through prototype build and test; you have taken a design through at least one full cycle of build, test, failure analysis and redesign.
Proficiency with 3D CAD (e.g., SolidWorks, Creo or Fusion) and engineering drawing practice, including tolerancing for thin, compliant parts.
PV electrical design fundamentals: series and parallel architecture, mismatch and shading losses, reverse bias and bypass protection, and current-voltage characterization.
Thermomechanical judgement: thermal expansion mismatch across dissimilar-material joints, stress and warp in thin laminates, and why a joint that survives terrestrial cycling may not survive an orbital one.
Structured test planning and data analysis: defined acceptance criteria, controls and clear decisions from small, expensive sample sets.
Comfort working hands-on in a small team where prototypes are few and expensive, the plan has to be right before the build starts, and priorities shift as results come in.
Clear technical writing and meticulous records: drawings and build instructions others can follow correctly without you present.

Nice To Haves

Space solar array, flexible PV or spacecraft hardware design, including qualification practice (e.g., AIAA S-111/S-112 or ECSS-E-ST-20-08), AM0 measurement, ASTM E595 outgassing, thermal cycling and launch vibration.
Perovskite, thin-film or tandem PV device and module experience, including laser-scribed monolithic interconnection.
Aerospace or government R&D program experience, such as design reviews, DFMEA, configuration control and federal proposals.
Flexible circuits, interconnect welding or soldering, or hermetic and thin-film encapsulation.

Responsibilities

Define prototype requirements with the program team (power, voltage, area, mass, stowage and operating environment) and translate them into design specifications and a verification plan.
Design module and coupon layouts: cell sizing and interconnect architecture, scribe and busbar patterns, string voltage and current, bypass and blocking protection, and terminations.
Design the mechanical build: laminate stack-up of cover, encapsulant, cell and substrate; edge seals; mounting to carriers, panels or flexible blankets; and harnessing and connectors, managing thermal expansion mismatch, stress and warp in low-stiffness structures.
Create and maintain CAD models, drawings, bills of materials, and mass and thickness budgets, and report performance in specific-power (W/kg) and areal-mass terms.
Build prototypes hands-on with technicians, and design the fixtures, jigs, masks and tooling needed to assemble, handle and test ultrathin and flexible parts.
Plan and run design verification (AM0 current-voltage, electroluminescence imaging, flex and bend, thermal cycling) and prepare pre-test baselines for external UV, radiation, vacuum and vibration campaigns; analyze failures and feed the findings into the next design iteration.
Work with process engineers to set design rules and tolerances that our cell deposition and laser patterning processes can reliably meet.
Own design documentation to design-review standard (requirements, drawings, DFMEA, build travelers and test reports), write build instructions and train technicians, and support government program reviews and reporting.