Founding Engineer — Pulsed Power & High Voltage

laurelin; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Laurelin in San Francisco is building a compact pulsed-fusion system and seeks a founding hardware engineer to own the capacitor bank, switching, and high-voltage safety for the first funded test program.

You will translate machine requirements into a testable power architecture, oversee component selection and fabrication, commission hardware, diagnose faults, and iterate designs toward integrated coil shots.

Qualifications

• Direct experience designing, commissioning, or operating high-energy pulsed-power or high-voltage systems.
• Strong working knowledge of switching, pulse-forming networks, protection, insulation coordination, grounding, and fault-energy management.
• Evidence of taking hardware from first architecture through safe bring-up, failure analysis, and verified correction.
• Ability to reason from first principles while making practical decisions under schedule and hardware constraints.
• Clear technical writing and a rigorous approach to laboratory safety.

Responsibilities

• Define capacitor-bank, switching, transmission, protection, dump, and crowbar architecture for staged experiments.
• Own high-voltage safety, grounding, interlocks, stored-energy procedures, and commissioning plans.
• Build a measured path from low-voltage checkout through banked-energy testing and first integrated coil shots.
• Diagnose switching, insulation, EMI, and energy-recovery failures using shot data.
• Specify components and work with fabricators and vendors while keeping interfaces under configuration control.
• Document acceptance criteria, hazards, test results, and design changes clearly enough for rapid review and repetition.

Skills

High-voltage systems

Pulsed-power design

Switching

Pulse-forming networks

Grounding

Insulation coordination

Fault-energy management

Technical writing

Job description

The role Build the first machine with us.Laurelin is developing a compact, pulsed fusion architecture designed around direct electromagnetic energy conversion. This founding engineering role would take primary ownership of the capacitor bank, switching, protection, pulse delivery, and high-voltage safety systems behind the first funded test program.You would work directly with founder Joe Finberg, translating machine requirements into a testable power architecture and building the evidence needed to advance from subsystem checkout to integrated coil shots. The work is hands-on: architecture, component selection, fabrication oversight, commissioning, fault investigation, and disciplined iteration at the bench.

What you would own

• Define the capacitor-bank, switching, transmission, protection, dump, and crowbar architecture for staged experiments.
• Own high-voltage safety, grounding, interlocks, stored-energy procedures, and commissioning plans.
• Build a measured path from low-voltage checkout through banked-energy testing and first integrated coil shots.
• Diagnose switching, insulation, electromagnetic-interference, and energy-recovery failures using shot data.
• Specify components and work with fabricators and vendors while keeping critical interfaces under tight configuration control.
• Document acceptance criteria, hazards, test results, and design changes clearly enough for rapid review and repetition.

What we are looking for

• Direct experience designing, commissioning, or operating high-energy pulsed-power or high-voltage systems.
• Strong working knowledge of switching, pulse-forming networks, protection, insulation coordination, grounding, and fault-energy management.
• Evidence of taking hardware from first architecture through safe bring-up, failure analysis, and verified correction.
• Ability to reason from first principles while making practical decisions under schedule and hardware constraints.
• Clear technical writing and a rigorous approach to laboratory safety.

Especially useful

• Experience with pulsed magnets, capacitor banks, high-current buswork, or plasma-physics experiments.
• Familiarity with electromagnetic simulation, high-bandwidth current and voltage measurement, and high-EMI environments.
• Experience establishing a new laboratory or early-stage hardware program.