Staff Hardware Validation Engineer

Company Overview

Amperesand is reinventing how the world powers its most critical systems.

We are facing a once-in-a-generation opportunity for infrastructure disruption. Electricity demand is skyrocketing, driven by AI factories, electric vehicles, and modern industrial growth. Energy supply is shifting to incorporate a more diverse mix of resources – including solar, gas, and batteries – at a massive scale.

And yet the power infrastructure behind our latest mega-projects hasn’t meaningfully changed in nearly 100 years. Supply chains for today’s infrastructure equipment can’t match the pace and sophistication of critical energy projects. Amperesand is building hardware and software that rewrites this broken power infrastructure playbook to support a new era of energy abundance.

We’ve built a new class of intelligent, software-defined power infrastructure products leveraging a decade of advanced medium voltage Solid State Transformer research that’s now ready for commercial deployment.

Our products and solutions go far beyond the capabilities of traditional electrical equipment. We make power systems that are faster to deploy, dramatically smaller and more efficient, and capable of supporting modern, dynamic energy needs for tomorrow’s most demanding energy consumers.

Scalable in-house advanced manufacturing capability is our foundation for meeting timeline and quality expectation to serve infrastructure customers around the world.

Amperesand is led by breakthrough energy hardware development veterans and funded by top tier investors who share our vision of building a category-defining energy technology company.

With hubs in San Francisco, Reno, and Singapore, our global team is laser focused on building foundational technology to solve the most pressing problems in power infrastructure at scale.

Join us in building the power foundation of the future!

Role

At Amperesand, you own validation of the power electronics that go into our solid-state transformers. As the technical validation lead for a major SST subsystem, you will take it from first bring-up through design validation, qualification, and continuous regression: building the test systems, defining the strategy, and holding the bar for what it means for high-power, high-voltage hardware to work flawlessly.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the technical validation lead for an assigned SST subsystem, owning the validation strategy, plan, and schedule from initial design validation through production ramp and sustaining releases.

• Design, develop, and maintain test systems for high-voltage, high-current power electronics, including load banks, source/sink and back-to-back converter setups, and thermal chambers.

• Characterize and validate the electrical, thermal, and performance behavior of our products across prototype, pre-production, and production builds: efficiency and loss breakdown, switching behavior, gate drive integrity, insulation coordination, derating, and margin to limits.

• Own the regression suite for your subsystem so that every hardware revision and firmware release is held to the same bar and automate it so it runs continuously without hand-holding.

• Trace each product requirement to the test that proves it, and make coverage gaps visible early rather than at the end of a build.

• Drive root cause analysis on failures and field escapes, from component-level debug through full-system interaction and follow fixes through to verified closure.

• Define the manufacturing test specification for volume production and transfer test systems and know-how to internal and contract manufacturing teams.

• Innovate test system design to meet accuracy, cycle time, cost, safety, and other performance factors. Quantify measurement uncertainty rather than assuming it.

• Collaborate closely with hardware design, firmware, magnetics, mechanical, and systems teams from early architecture reviews onward, and push for design-for-test and design-for-validation features before layouts are frozen.

• Mentor engineers and technicians on high-voltage practice, measurement technique, and debug methodology. Review test plans and results across the team.

• Establish and uphold high-voltage safety practices in the lab, including interlocks, procedures, and training.

• Challenge ideas and decisions with reasoning from first principles.

• Travel to different facilities worldwide to collaborate with teams and deploy our solutions.

Qualifications

• BS or MS in Electrical or Computer Engineering.

• 6+ years of hands-on experience in test, validation, or integration engineering, with substantial time spent on power electronics.

• Demonstrated ownership of a product or subsystem through a full validation cycle, from first bring-up and design validation to production and sustaining regression.

• Deep understanding of power electronics principles: switching converter topologies, magnetics, gate drive, control loops, high-voltage and high-current systems, and power conversion technologies.

• Strong hands-on high-voltage lab skills and a rigorous, safety-first approach to working at power.

• Solid experience with PCBA schematics and debugging hardware down to the component level.

• Fluency with oscilloscopes, high-voltage differential probes, current shunts and Rogowski coils, power analyzers, multimeters, dielectric withstand testers, and thermal instrumentation such as thermocouples and IR imaging.

• Comfort with the data side of validation: structured results, dashboards, and statistical analysis that make a decision obvious.

• Be engaged, proactive, and positive when taking on challenging tasks, owning assignments, and taking accountability for personal and overall team success.

Nice to Have

• Experience with grid-tied inverters and active front ends, or DC fast charging.

• Familiarity with partial discharge, dielectric withstand, and insulation coordination against standards such as IEC 61800-5-1, UL 1741, or IEEE 1547.

• SiC or GaN device characterization, including double-pulse testing, switching loss measurement, and short-circuit behavior.

• EMC pre-compliance testing.

• Grounding and shielding design for fast-switching systems.

• HALT/HASS, accelerated life testing, or reliability engineering exposure.

• Experience using system-level languages (such as Golang, Rust, C, C++, etc.) to automate systems, along with Python for instrument control and data analysis.

SF Pay Range

$165,000 — $200,000 USD

Reno Pay Range

$145,000 — $175,000 USD

Please note : This role requires working on-site 5 days a week. We do not offer hybrid or remote options.

While this role is listed for the location above, we may consider candidates in other locations on a case-by-case basis.

Onsite Collaboration Rationale:

Given the highly collaborative and cross-functional nature of hardware, embedded systems, and product development, in-person partnership across engineering and product teams is critical to enabling rapid execution, technical alignment, and successful development outcomes.

Why Join Amperesand

• Work on next-generation power infrastructure systems

• High ownership and visibility

• Cross-functional collaboration

• Opportunity to shape future products and infrastructure

• Fast-moving startup environment

Pay Disclosure & Benefits

Compensation will be determined based on experience, location, and other factors permitted by law.

The benefits outlined below apply exclusively to employees located in the United States:

• Competitive Salary + Incentive Stock Options

• Medical, vision, and dental benefits for employees and their dependents, effective from the start of hire

• Company paid Basic Life, AD&D, short-term and long-term disability insurance

• 401k retirement savings plan through Empower

• Employees receive paid time off (PTO), paid sick days, and paid company holidays

• Commuter Benefits

• 100% paid maternal leave (12 weeks) and paternal leave (6 weeks)

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