Test Engineer – Power Electronics

Heron Power•Scotts Valley, CA

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.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Mechatronics, or equivalent practical experience.
Experience in designing and delivering automated test setups for high-voltage / high-power systems.
Strong fundamentals in circuits and instrumentation.
Hands-on experience with scopes, DMMs, power supplies, electronic loads, DAQs, and digital interfaces (CAN, Ethernet, SPI, I2C, UART).
Demonstrated ownership of a test system from concept through deployment and sustainment.
Ability to work cross-functionally and drive issues to closure.

Nice To Haves

Experience with bi-directional AC/DC or DC/DC power sources and regenerative loads.
Experience with HIL development or embedded firmware validation infrastructure.
Experience with PCBA manufacturing functional test and yield improvement.
Familiarity with production traceability systems and calibration discipline.
Experience developing test systems for medium-voltage or high-power converter products.

Responsibilities

Define functional test coverage for PCBAs, subsystems, and full systems.
Architect test solutions balancing coverage, cycle time, cost, and maintainability.
Partner with design engineering to drive Design-for-Test (DFT): test points, boundary scan, firmware testing , and observability.
Define regression strategy to prevent re-learning the same lessons across builds and firmware releases.
Establish pass/fail criteria grounded in real system performance and reliability goals.
Design and deliver automated bi-directional converter testers for AC/DC and DC/DC systems capable of source and sink operation.
Architect high-power test cells including bidirectional AC/DC sources, regenerative loads, grid simulators (as needed), HV measurement chains, contactors and protection systems, interlocks and safe operating procedures, grounding strategy.
Implement automated test sequences for power cycling, efficiency mapping, transient response, fault injection, protection validation.
Ensure high-voltage testing is safe, repeatable, and production-ready.
Design and build PCBA functional fixtures (bed-of-nails, pogo, interface boards), harness and connector validation fixtures, subsystem and system-level interface racks, and fault-injection rigs.
Specify and integrate instrumentation including power supplies, electronic loads, DAQs, DMMs, oscilloscopes, power analyzers, CAN/Ethernet/RS-485 tools, and sensors.
Deliver stations that are robust, safe, maintainable, and scalable.
Drive rapid debug loops when tests fail.
Improve test observability and diagnostic resolution.
Own station version control, calibration, uptime, and software releases.
Partner with manufacturing to improve yield, reduce escapes, and accelerate learning loops.
Close the loop with design and reliability teams.