Staff Power Electronics Hardware Design Engineer

Job Description

Job Description

  Job Title: Staff Power Electronics Hardware Design Engineer

Job Description

Trystar’s team members are our most important asset. We are looking for a Staff Power Electronics Hardware Design Engineer to own the hardware of our power conversion products, from topology selection through validated prototypes and release to commercial-scale manufacturing. You will design the power stages, gate drives, protection, and supporting circuits of rectifiers, inverters, and DC/DC converters that operate at, for example, up to 2200 VDC and 800 kW, and you will set the hardware design rules that a product line follows. You will lead the hardware workstream as a senior individual contributor, work closely with the controls, firmware, PCB design, mechanical, test, and compliance engineers who build these products with you, and mentor the engineers who design and validate the hardware.

Location: Merrimack, NH, onsite, is preferred; Pointe-Claire, QC, will be considered. Travel within North America up to 20%.

In this role you will:

• Own the power-stage hardware design of assigned power conversion products and set the hardware design rules that the product line follows.
• Design power stages for AC/DC rectifiers, DC/AC inverters, and bidirectional, multi-phase, and interleaved DC/DC converters using Si and SiC MOSFETs, IGBTs, and SCRs, at voltages, for example, up to 2200 VDC and 2000 VAC and power levels from 10 to 800 kW.
• Design gate drives, current and voltage sensing, protection and fault-detection circuits, and auxiliary power supplies.
• Design supporting circuits, including DC links, active and passive pre-charge and discharge circuits, input and output filters, snubbers, clamps, relay and contactor drives, fan control and monitoring, and interfaces to capacitor and supercapacitor energy storage.
• Design and specify low- and high-frequency magnetic and filter components and qualify them with suppliers.
• Analyze losses, thermal performance, component stress, and derating, and work with mechanical engineers on cooling, busbars, and packaging.
• Design for safety and compliance, including insulation coordination, creepage and clearance, and EMC/EMI, against applicable standards such as UL 62477-1.
• Define the hardware requirements that controls and firmware must respect, including sensing ranges, PWM and dead-time limits, and protection thresholds and response times, and review control and firmware designs for hardware compatibility.
• Provide schematics and design intent to PCB designers, and review layouts for high-power, fast-switching circuits.
• Lead conceptualization and design; perform design verification after peer review as a paper exercise to confirm that the design meets requirements; lead design validation by building and testing prototypes to confirm that they function as required; and specify test methods for validation, production, and regulatory compliance.
• Write specifications, design calculations, design-review packages, and released documentation in PLM.
• Lead design reviews, and plan and track the scope and schedule of the hardware workstream.
• Support the transfer to production and resolve hardware issues found in production and in the field.
• Mentor hardware designers and engineers.

REQUIRED

• Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering or a related technical field, with 10+ years of relevant industrial experience in power electronics hardware design.
• Demonstrated experience taking high-power AC/DC, DC/AC, or DC/DC power stages from schematic through validated prototypes, using Si and SiC power devices.
• Experience designing gate drives and selecting power semiconductors.
• Extensive experience in analog design for power and instrumentation systems, including sensing, communications, fault monitoring, and protection schemes.
• Experience designing and specifying low- and high-frequency magnetic components, filter topologies, and EMC/EMI compliance approaches.
• Experience applying insulation coordination, creepage, and clearance requirements to high-voltage equipment.
• Experience defining hardware requirements for the modulation and control software and programmable logic of power stages.
• Ability to perform paper-based design verification against requirements after peer review and to specify prototype build and test strategies and methods for design validation, as well as test methods for production and regulatory compliance.
• Experience working with PCB designers and mechanical engineers on PCB floorplans, mechanical packaging, thermal and electrical interfaces, and cooling approaches.
• Schematic capture, simulation, and modelling experience with tools such as LTspice, MATLAB, Simulink, PSIM, and Python, and experience with document control and PLM.
• Hands-on laboratory experience with high-voltage, high-power hardware.
• Demonstrated technical leadership, documentation skills, and ability to mentor engineers.

PREFERRED

• Master’s or doctoral degree in electrical engineering or power electronics.
• Magnetic design of transformers, inductors, and common-mode chokes using ferrite, powdered metal, and amorphous materials with round, helical, foil, and litz windings.
• Digital circuit design, including DSPs, FPGAs and PLDs, real-time clocks, and RS-485, CAN, Ethernet, SPI, and I2C communications.
• Experience with product safety standards such as UL 62477-1 and UL 1741, and with listing through a nationally recognized testing laboratory.
• Experience with engineering performance and type testing in accordance with IEC 62040-3 and IEEE 2405 standards.
• Experience with capacitor and supercapacitor energy storage interfaces.
• Experience with converters that operate in parallel on a high-voltage DC bus.
• Experience with isolated DC/DC converters and medium-frequency transformers.
• Experience with liquid-cooled power assemblies.
• NFPA 70E certification.

Skills

• Exceptional attention to detail and analytical rigor in circuit design and analysis.
• Ability to move effectively between calculations, simulation results, and laboratory measurements.
• Clear written and verbal communication, including documentation of design decisions, assumptions, tradeoffs, and test results.
• Collaborative technical leadership across power electronics, controls, firmware, mechanical, test, and compliance teams.
• Ability to plan and lead a hardware workstream against a detailed development schedule.