Senior Battery Systems Simulation & Validation Engineer

Team: Electrical Engineering

Location: Palo Alto, CA

Commitment: Full-time (Exempt)

Workplace Type: onsite

Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain cell and pack-level thermal, electrical, and performance models. 

• Simulate charging, discharging, heat generation, cooling, environmental exposure, aging, and off-nominal operating conditions. 

• Evaluate battery performance across ambient-temperature extremes, solar loading, rapid charging, ground turnaround, and representative flight missions. 

• Plan model-correlation activities and use bench, environmental, and flight-test data to improve model accuracy and engineering confidence. 

• Define verification methods, and evidence for battery-system requirements. 

• Define performance test objectives, test profiles, and acceptance criteria in partnership with the test team. 

• Author and review engineering analyses, verification plans, test plans, test reports, and technical decision records. 

• Support pack-architecture trades involving cell selection, packaging, cooling approaches, venting, sensing, and protection features. 

• Analyze battery degradation, state of charge, state of health, energy capability, power capability, and thermal margins. 

• Partner with the Battery Management System, electrical, and software teams on models, interfaces, diagnostics, and data quality. 

• Partner with mechanical engineers on thermal-management design, structural interfaces, installation constraints, and aircraft integration. 

• Identify technical risks early and recommend practical mitigation, validation, or redesign actions. 

• Improve reusable simulation, data-processing, requirements-traceability, and verification workflows. 

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Mechanical, Aerospace, Electrical, Chemical Engineering, or a related technical discipline. 

• Five or more years of relevant experience in battery modeling, simulation, validation, testing, or system development. 

• Experience developing equivalent-circuit and thermal models of lithium-ion cells and packs. 

• Strong understanding of lithium-ion cell behavior, heat transfer, battery-pack operation, and test-data interpretation. 

• Experience developing and validating engineering models against measured data. 

• Proficiency with MATLAB, Python, Simulink, or comparable engineering analysis tools. 

• Experience with CFD, thermal-network modeling, electrothermal modeling, or multiphysics tools such as STAR-CCM+, ANSYS, Simcenter, or COMSOL.  

• Experience defining verification activities and producing clear technical documentation. 

• Strong analytical, troubleshooting, and cross-functional communication skills. 

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with electric aircraft, electric vehicles, UAVs, aerospace systems, or other high-power battery applications. 

• Experience with battery-aging, degradation, state-estimation, or mission-performance models. 

• Exposure to battery abuse testing, thermal-runaway analysis, and propagation-mitigation concepts. 

• Familiarity with aerospace verification, environmental qualification, requirements management, and configuration control. 

• Experience with high-voltage battery systems and battery-management-system data. 

 

Ideal Candidate 

• Uses first-principles reasoning while remaining pragmatic about schedule, hardware, and available evidence.

• Is equally comfortable working independently on analysis and collaborating at the test article or aircraft. 

• Communicates assumptions, uncertainty, correlation quality, and technical risk clearly. 

• Thrives in rapid development cycles and converts incomplete information into focused learning plans. 

Attributes aligned with Core Values

• Safety Above All: Demonstrates a proactive safety mindset by embedding safety into daily work, identifying and mitigating risks, encouraging open dialogue about safety concerns, and continuously improving practices and protocols.
• Customer Focus: Puts customers at the center of every action by understanding their challenges, delivering meaningful value, and supporting their success.
• Work Better Together: Seeks and values diverse perspectives, builds cross-functional relationships, and fosters trust through empathetic, fact-based communication and commitment to shared decisions.
• Be the Pilot: Drives results with clarity and purpose by focusing on what matters most, adapting to change, taking initiative, and owning outcomes.
• Embrace the Unknown: Navigates ambiguity with resilience and bold thinking, challenges the status quo, and combines innovative ideas with practical approaches to overcome obstacles and drive progress.
• Respect for People: Fosters a high-performance culture grounded in respect, professionalism, and support by balancing high expectations with a healthy, collaborative environment and being a trusted, dependable teammate.