Senior/Staff Power Electronics Engineer, Power Conversion
Senior/Staff Power Electronics Engineer at Tau (Redwood City, onsite 5 days/week) leads end-to-end design, modeling, and validation of power converters for EVs and energy storage — working with Si/SiC/GaN semiconductors, gate drives, PCB layout, and simulation tools like PLECS, MATLAB/Simulink, and dSPACE.
- Compensation
- $120K–$210K / yr
- Location
- Redwood City, CA
- Work setup
- Not specified
- Seniority
- Staff
- Employment
- Not specified
- Experience
- 5+ years
- Category
- Hardware
- Posted
Skills
Must have
- 5+ years relevant industry experience in power electronics, preferably automotive or EV charging systems
- Hands-on experience designing Onboard Chargers (OBC), bidirectional chargers, or high-voltage power conversion including isolation topologies, PFC stages, and DC/DC conversion stages
- Familiarity with AC/DC, DC/DC, and DC/AC applications and control of variable frequency converters
- Strong understanding of power electronics topologies
- Experience with high voltage power semiconductor selection (Si/SiC/GaN MOSFETs, diodes), gate drive, and protection circuit design
- Strong understanding of switching waveforms, semiconductor losses, and experience with loss modeling
- System understanding of device characteristics, gate driving circuit design, thermal design, topologies, modulation schemes, and control strategies in high- and low-voltage power converters
- Familiar with tools such as PLECS, PSCAD/EMTDC, MATLAB/Simulink, dSPACE
- Experience with advanced modulation approaches for highly efficient converter designs
- Experience designing large state machines for complex power converter implementations
- Familiar with analog design, digital design, mixed-signal design (ADCs/DACs), and their use in control design
- Solid understanding of the theory and application of magnetics (inductors, transformers) and capacitors (electrolytic, film, ceramic) for power conversion
- Good experience with designing analog/digital circuits and microprocessors
- Proficiency with hands-on EE tools such as oscilloscopes, network analyzers, and signal generators for testing and validation
- Proficiency in PCB layout techniques for minimizing stray inductance/capacitance, manufacturability, power/signal planes, and EMC compliance
- Work onsite five days a week in Redwood City
Nice to have
- Masters or PhD in electrical engineering, computer engineering, mechatronic engineering, or equivalent with a focus on power electronics
- Awareness of UL and CE electrical safety and EMC requirements for power converter design
- Knowledge of environmental, reliability, and safety requirements for Automotive, Industrial, & Residential applications
- Proven ability to design systems that are resilient to faults and errors
Full description
About Tau
Power conversion is the bottleneck between the compute, energy, and mobility industries and the future they're trying to build. Most of the industry is still solving it with decades-old approaches. Tau is fixing that. We're a venture-backed hardtech company in Redwood City, building power conversion technology for data centers, EVs, and energy systems. Several products are already moving into production.
We hire people who own problems end-to-end: power electronics, embedded software, controls, test and validation, mechanical design. We solve from first principles, not legacy playbooks. We're past "promising technology." Customers are buying, volume is coming, and the people who join now set the standard everyone builds on after.
About the Role
We seek an experienced and highly accomplished Senior/Staff Power Electronics Engineer to join our innovative team at Tau Motors. In this crucial role, you will spearhead the design, development, and implementation of cutting-edge power electronics systems for next-generation electric vehicles and energy storage solutions. As a critical member of our power electronics team, you will drive the modeling, architecture, and validation of advanced power converter topologies, contributing significantly to Tau's technology roadmap and product offerings.
Because our success depends on collaboration, we expect new employees to work onsite five days a week to build strong working relationships with the team.
Our Engineering ApproachSolve customer problems, not engineering puzzles. Great technical work becomes exceptional when it creates reliable products, enables meaningful new capability, and solves real customer problems.
Think in systems. Understand how your work affects the complete product and the people who build it. Make tradeoffs that improve the whole, not just your direct area of ownership.
Exercise judgment. Apply the engineering rigor the risk requires. Make timely decisions with the available evidence, communicate uncertainty, and balance technical excellence with program needs.
Raise the standard. Deliver quality work on time, improve how the team works, and leave the products, systems, tools, and people around you better than you found them.
What You'll DoTechnical Expertise
- Extensive knowledge and hands-on experience in power electronics topologies, semiconductor devices (Si/SiC/GaN), gate driving circuits, and protection circuit design.
- Deep understanding of switching waveforms, semiconductor losses, and proven experience in loss modeling and optimization techniques.
- Comprehensive expertise in device characteristics, gate driving circuit design, thermal design, topologies, modulation schemes, and control strategies for high- and low-voltage power converters.