About Castelion

Castelion is bringing a new approach to defense development and production: one that focuses on short, iterative design cycles, rapid testing in development, and modern commercial manufacturing strategies for production at scale. We’re designing, building, and testing next generation long range strike weapons systems to give America and its Allies a definitive edge and deter future conflicts.

Senior Power Electronics Engineer

Castelion is seeking a high performing Senior Power Electronics engineer to lead the architecture, design, and development of power systems across the missile. In this role you will be responsible for both high level architecture and detailed design, delivering power from a few W to many kW across Castelion missile systems; including high power radar seeker systems, BLDC motors, digital computers, radios, batteries, and other vehicle systems. The role will coordinate closely with Castelion’s engineering leadership and architect designs for future Castelion vehicles and ground systems. A successful candidate will have significant experience delivering highly manufacturable power electronics hardware with extreme reliability for mission-critical applications in a fast-paced environment.

Responsibilities

• Missile-Level Development. Take ownership of the entire power architecture, starting at the missile level. Research and design to external interface definitions, internal subsystem power predictions, and anticipated customer requirements. Work on electrical power system and sub-system level design trades and develop requirements. Define and perform electrical power system verification testing and analysis. Take ownership of key data products (power tree, sequencing diagrams, fault analyses, etc) that keep the broader team in-sync regarding power. Become the subject matter expert at Castelion for all things power.

• Seeker-Level Development. The seeker is anticipated to be the most demanding subsystem power design. Work with the seeker team to develop a detailed design that is compliant, affordable, feasible, and manufacturable at scale. Provide engineering expertise in design, analysis, and testing of DC-DC power converters for harsh environments operating at a few kW.

• Battery Development. Research candidate battery chemistries and present the trades to the broader engineering team. Drive Castelion battery programs through all phases of development, from R&D to prototype, mass production, and in-field performance. Own cell and pack level technical design, optimizing for safety, performance, cost, and manufacturability.

• Lead Team in Fast-Paced Environment. Lead design reviews and system architecture reviews for power relates systems. Demonstrate daily/weekly cadence of development progress and prototype design cycles every four weeks. Complete design and requirement reviews ahead of build and capture value from high cadence testing and prototype builds.

• Implement and Manage Castelion Avionics Standards including modeling, PCBA rules, derating, and naming conventions. Responsible for building out quality/reliability standards including EEE part sourcing and acceptance/qualification testing of your designs.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering
• 5+ years of experience in power converter development
• Previous experience with DC-DC power converter development
• Experience in modeling, simulation, and testing of power electronics
• Experience with high power DC applications (2kW) in small form-factors
• Experience in modeling, simulation, and testing of power electronics.

Preferred Skills and Experience

• Missile Experience. Demonstrated ability to design, order, and integrate flight power systems in missiles, from initial power budgets to scaled production. Strong grasp of DC-DC topologies, with ability to select optimal architectures and components. Experience or clear understanding of how to design for harsh missile environments. Familiarity with the relevant MIL specs, how to design to meet them, and how to test against them.

• Design for Cost. Demonstrated ability to include cost in both architecture and design decisions. Cost includes the total cost of having a component in a system (part cost, assembly cost, failure rates, reworkability, etc.). Ability to work with cross-disciplinary team to drive cost out of system.

• Full Life-Cycle Development. Ability to creatively solve problems and weigh against multi-disciplinary requirements together while assessing risk and making design and development decisions. Understanding of electrical schematics and electronics manufacturing to analyze and improve test coverage. Hands-on experience with sizing, installing and troubleshooting various power components.

Leadership Qualities

Bias to Action and Creative Problem Solving. Desire and experience questioning assumptions in ways that lead to break through ideas that are ultimately implemented. Successfully bring in applicable processes/concepts/materials from other industries to achieve efficiency gains. Ability to personally resolve minor issues in development without requiring significant support.

High Commitment, High Initiative. A successful candidate will have a genuine passion for Castelion’s mission and consistently look for ways to contribute to the company’s technical goals and prevent hardware blockers. Ability to work in a fast paced, autonomously driven, and demanding atmosphere. Strong sense of accountability and integrity.

Clear Communicator. Proactively communicates blockers. Trusted in previous roles to be voice of company with regulators, suppliers, gate keepers and customers. Capable of tactfully managing relationships with stakeholders to achieve company-desired outcomes without compromising relationships. Emails, IMs and verbal interactions are logical, drive clarity, and detailed enough to eliminate ambiguity.

ITAR Requirements:

• To conform to U.S. Government export regulations, applicant must be a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful, permanent resident (aka green card holder), (iii) Refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or (iv) Asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, or be eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.

Employment with Castelion is governed on the basis of competence and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability or any other legally protected status.