Senior Battery Engineer

About Cowboy Space Corp:
Mission

Cowboy Space Corporation is solving the global energy crisis by building the infrastructure for abundant, resilient space-based solar energy. We are tackling one of humanity's most complex engineering challenges with a world-class team dedicated to delivering a revolutionary power platform. Cowboy Space Corporation is transforming how civilization powers, computes and connects - from orbit to Earth.

Cowboy Space Corporation is building the infrastructure to power and connect the orbital economy. Our modular, scalable satellites collect sunlight in Low Earth Orbit to enable multiple integrated applications: transmitting energy via infrared lasers (space-to-earth and space-to-space), powering on-orbit high-performance computing clusters (GPU/TPU), and providing secure, high bandwidth optical data transport.

Current energy and data systems rely on complex logistics and outdated infrastructure. Cowboy Space Corporation overcomes these challenges by enabling direct, on-demand, secure, and scalable energy distribution and data processing from space. This will revolutionize how we operate in orbit and on Earth, supporting the rapidly expanding space industrial base, ISAM (In-Space Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing) operations, remote regions, and military bases.

Baiju Bhatt founded Cowboy Space Corporation in 2024. Inspired by his father's work with NASA Langley Research Center, Baiju earned his B.S. in Physics and M.S. in Mathematics at Stanford before co-founding Robinhood, now a public company that has helped over 20 million Americans access the financial system. Cowboy Space Corporation has raised ~$365 million from Index Ventures, Interlagos, Construct Ventures, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, NEA, and others.

This is an ambitious mission that demands extraordinary talent. Cowboy Space Corporation's team has worked at places like SpaceX, Blue Origin, Stoke Space, Astranis and NASA, and is based in San Carlos, CA. If you're ready to solve complex technical challenges and help build the most important energy company in the world, we want to hear from you.

We're looking for a Battery Engineer to own the design, development, integration, and qualification of our spacecraft battery systems. You'll be responsible for developing reliable, high-performance energy storage solutions that power the spacecraft through eclipse periods, peak load events, and critical mission operations.

This is a hands-on individual contributor role for an engineer who enjoys taking battery systems from concept through flight. You'll work closely with power electronics, avionics, thermal, mechanical, and software engineers to develop flight-ready battery hardware capable of operating safely and reliably in the harsh environment of space.

• Own the architecture and development of spacecraft batteries from concept through flight qualification
• Design battery packs, module architectures, and electrical interconnects (e.g., laser welding, wire bonding, busbar design) to meet mission performance requirements, including series/parallel cell configuration trade-offs
• Develop a battery management system (BMS), including cell balancing (passive and active balancing techniques), state-of-charge (SOC) and state-of-health (SOH) estimation (coulomb counting, OCV-based, and model-based/Kalman filtering approaches), fault detection, and protection strategies (overvoltage, under voltage, overcurrent, over temperature, cell imbalance)
• Select battery cell chemistries and components (e.g., NMC, NCA, LFP, or primary Li-CFx for long-duration/low-power missions) based on mission requirements, specific energy/power trade-offs, cycle life, reliability, and environmental constraints
• Perform battery sizing, capacity analysis, degradation modeling (capacity fade, impedance growth), depth-of-discharge (DoD) management for cycle life targets, and lifecycle assessments
• Develop battery charging and discharge strategies in partnership with the spacecraft power systems team, including coordination with solar array power management (MPPT vs. direct energy transfer) and peak-load discharge current limiting
• Define thermal management requirements and collaborate with thermal engineers to ensure safe battery operation, including thermal runaway propagation mitigation (cell-to-cell spacing, thermal barriers, venting design) and cold-survival heater strategy
• Lead battery integration, validation, environmental qualification, and acceptance testing, including vibration/shock (per GEVS/NASA-STD-7001 or ECSS equivalents), thermal vacuum cycling (TVAC), vacuum out gassing (ASTM E595), and abuse testing (overcharge, short circuit, crush, penetration, thermal abuse)
• Investigate battery performance, reliability, and failure modes through analysis and testing, including root-cause failure analysis and corrective action development
• Support manufacturing, supplier selection, DFM/DFT reviews, cell matching/sorting…