Chief Engineer- Power Electronics

Drive System Design; Farmington Hills (MI); On-site; USD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Drive System Design seeks an experienced leader to architect and deliver advanced power electronics systems across traction inverters, motor drives, OBC, and DC/DC platforms. You will own system-level architectures, guide topology choices, and drive safety and EMC integration across multiple projects.

The role requires deep hands-on experience with SiC/IGBT/GaN devices, and the ability to steer cross‑disciplinary teams through architecture reviews, validation, and production‑intent hardware.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree (BS) with typically 12+ years of relevant experience.
• Master’s degree (MS) with typically 8+ years of relevant experience.
• Doctorate (PhD) with typically 5+ years of relevant industry experience.
• Experience delivering high‑power, safety‑critical, multi‑disciplinary programs.

Responsibilities

• Define and own system-level architectures for power electronics platforms.
• Act as final technical authority for topology selection, voltage/current class, derating, protection concepts.
• Lead architecture reviews at architecture, schematic, layout, and system-integration levels.
• Provide authority over digital control architectures for converters and motor drives.
• Define control partitioning across MCU, DSP, FPGA, and safety processors.
• Guide validation planning and correlation for drive performance across speed/torque range.

Skills

High-power electronics

SiC/IGBT/GaN

Topology selection

EMC design

System-level optimization

Fault handling

Customer-facing

Risk management

Engineering leadership

Education

BS +12+ years

MS +8+ years

PhD +5+ years

Job description

At Drive System Design, engineers don’t get pigeonholed - they work across an exceptionally broad and challenging portfolio of projects that span automotive, aerospace, marine, defense, commercial vehicle, and off‑highway sectors. Our teams design and develop next‑generation electric and hybrid systems for both vehicle propulsion and power generation. Using a simulation‑led, system‑level engineering approach, engineers are involved from concept through design, development, and in‑house testing. DSD offers the rare opportunity to build deep technical expertise while continuously expanding engineers' experience across diverse applications and markets.

Role Overview

Lead the design and development of advanced power electronics systems, ensuring robust architecture, performance, and delivery across projects.

Key Responsibilities

• Define and own system-level architectures for power electronics platforms, including traction inverters and motor drives, on-board chargers (single and three-phase AC/DC with isolated DC/DC stages), HV/LV DC/DC converters (isolated and non-isolated, unidirectional and bidirectional)
• Act as final technical decision authority for topology selection, voltage/current class definition, derating philosophy, protection concepts, and performance limits.
• Govern architecture trade-offs across efficiency, power density, cost, reliability, manufacturability, and scalability.
• Lead and approve deep technical design reviews at architecture, schematic, layout, and system-integration levels.
• Provide authority over digital control architectures for converters and motor drives
• Define control partitioning across MCU, DSP, FPGA, and safety processors, including timing, latency, redundancy, and diagnostic coverage.
• Provide senior technical guidance on sensing architectures, estimator robustness, and real-world non-idealities (offsets, delays, saturation, quantization).
• Own system-level magnetics strategy, including inductors, transformers, common-mode chokes, and EMI filtering networks.
• Guide capacitor technology selection (film, ceramic, electrolytic), ripple current limits, DC bias effects, and lifetime considerations.
• Lead and guide electrical-mechanical co-design, including packaging constraints, vibration, isolation strategy, creepage/clearance, and thermal paths.
• Act as senior technical authority for functional safety and EMC, guiding architecture and verification in accordance with: ISO 26262, IEC 61508, CISPR 25 and OEM EMC standards, High-voltage insulation and isolation requirements
• Provide senior technical guidance on motor-drive control strategies, including field-oriented control (FOC), field-weakening, overmodulation, and torque ripple / NVH mitigation approaches.
• Support development and review of control and protection behaviors for abnormal operation and fault handling, including safe torque response and degraded operation strategies.
• Ensure motor-drive controls are consistent with hardware constraints (DC bus limits, current sensing, switching behavior, thermal limits), and with EMC and functional safety objectives.
• Guide validation planning and correlation for drive performance across speed/torque range, including efficiency, thermal derating behavior, and robustness to parameter variation.
• Define system-level safety concepts, fault reactions, and diagnostic strategies rather than component-level compliance only.
• Lead EMC architecture decisions, correlation strategies, and root‑cause resolution of emissions and susceptibility issues.
• Lead, define, set direction for multi-domain modelling and simulation (electrical, control, thermal, magnetic, EMC) with demonstrated correlation to hardware.
• Define validation philosophies and test strategies, including worst‑case and derating analysis, accelerated life and robustness testing, fault injection and abnormal operation
• Oversee validation from early prototypes through production‑intent hardware and sector qualification for inverters, OBC, and DC/DC platforms.
• Provide senior responsibility for safe operation of high‑voltage, high‑power laboratories, including MW‑class systems.
• Define test infrastructure requirements, protection schemes, and safe operating procedures.
• Interpret test data at system level, identifying cross‑domain root causes beyond instrumentation artifacts.
• Provide technical governance across multiple concurrent programs, ensuring delivery to performance, cost, timing, and margin objectives.
• Support and shape RFQs, technical proposals, scope definition, cost estimation, and technical risk assessment.
• Act as senior technical escalation points for customers and internal stakeholders.
• Build and maintain trusted senior‑level technical relationships with OEMs, Tier‑1s, and strategic partners.
• Identify, develop, and institutionalize new technical capabilities, standards, and reference architectures aligned with long‑term business strategy.
• Influence R&D investment direction and technology roadmaps across power electronics, packaging, and control.
• Ensure knowledge capture, reuse, and consistency across programs.
• Mentor Principal, Senior, and early‑career engineers, raising technical rigor and engineering judgment.
• Act as a role model for engineering excellence, professionalism, and safety discipline.
• Foster a collaborative, high‑performance, multi‑disciplinary engineering culture.

Requirements

• Deep, hands‑on experience delivering high‑power, high‑voltage power electronics systems (inverters, OBC, DC/DC, AC/DC) from concept through validation and production‑intent hardware.
• Expert knowledge of power semiconductor devices (SiC, IGBT, GaN), including SOA, short‑circuit behaviour, dv/dt and di/dt limits, aging mechanisms, and mission‑profile‑based lifetime modelling.
• Authority in converter and charger architectures, including PFC stages, isolated DC/DC topologies (LLC, PSFB, DAB), and multiphase DC/DC systems.
• Strong expertise in EMC‑aware design, isolation systems, and functional safety allocation at system level.
• Demonstrated success correlating simulation, bench testing, and vehicle/system‑level results.
• Proven record of planning, selling, leading, and delivering large, multi‑disciplinary programs in safety‑critical sectors.
• Familiarity with motor‑drive control concepts across multiple machine types (e.g., IPM/SPM, IM/ASM, SR), including FOC, field‑weakening, overmodulation, NVH/torque ripple mitigation, and protection/fault handling.
• Understanding of practical implementation constraints for motor drives, including sensing limitations, sampling and delay effects, inverter nonlinearities, and real‑world commissioning considerations.
• Strong customer‑facing presence with the ability to influence technical and commercial outcomes.
• Structured, methodical approach to engineering decisions, risk management, and complex problem solving.

Education & Experience

• Bachelor’s degree (BS) with typically 12+ years of relevant experience, or
• Master’s degree (MS) with typically 8+ years of relevant experience, or
• Doctorate (PhD) with typically 5+ years of relevant industry experience.