Power Electronics Engineer

Power Electronics Engineer

San Francisco
· Full-time
· In Office

Aurelius Systems builds laser weapons that shoot down drones. Not simulations. Not proposals. Real directed energy systems that go downrange.

We're ~20 engineers executing against a $151B MDA SHIELD IDIQ contract, field testing monthly on our own 400+ acre range. We shipped more hardware last quarter than most defense startups ship in a year.

Our namesake isn't an accident. Marcus Aurelius wrote about doing the work in front of you, every day, without excuses. Henry Ford didn't wait for permission to reinvent manufacturing. That's how we operate — small team, unreasonable output, no hiding behind Power Points.

If you've spent the last few years designing power systems that sit in review cycles for months before anyone builds them, this is the opposite of that. You'll see your work fire a laser within weeks.

You'll own the entire power chain for a directed energy weapon system — from battery pack to laser diode output.

This is a senior hands-on role. You're not handing off designs to a technician. You're architecting battery management systems, building high-voltage converters, pulling wire harnesses, and standing on the range watching your power system deliver kilowatts to a target. When something faults, you're the one who diagnoses it, fixes it, and hardens the design so it doesn't happen again.

At ~20 people, there's no power electronics team to hide in. You are the power electronics team. That means your decisions ship fast, your mistakes teach fast, and your impact is visible from day one.

• Architect, build, and validate battery management systems for high-voltage packs — safe charge/discharge, cell balancing, thermal management, and fault protection
• Design high-voltage DC/DC converters, rectifiers, inverters, and diode driver electronics for laser power delivery
• Step power up and down safely and reliably across the full path from battery to laser diode
• Design and fabricate ruggedized wire harnesses for high-power laser and motor systems — connector selection, routing, shielding, environmental protection
• Drive hands-on prototyping, assembly, and field testing on our 400+ acre range
• Execute electrical, environmental, vibration, shock, and robustness testing to validate system reliability
• Perform electrical simulations (SPICE, MATLAB/Simulink) to optimize designs before you build them
• Conduct DFM reviews and work directly with fabricators to move designs into production
• Integrate power systems with mechanical, optical, and robotics subsystems
• Generate schematics, BOMs, wiring diagrams, and documentation to MIL-STD and ITAR standards

• 3-8 years in power electronics with direct hardware experience — you've physically built and tested what you've designed
• Deep experience with battery management systems — pack architecture, BMS design, high-voltage battery integration, thermal and fault management
• Proven work with 48V+ power systems — high-voltage conversion, regulation, and safe power delivery
• Hands-on wire harness design and fabrication for real deployed systems
• Proficient in Altium Designer, SPICE, and MATLAB/Simulink
• Strong background in thermal management, EMI/EMC, and ruggedized system design

Where you probably come from: EV powertrain teams (Tesla, Rivian, Lucid, Canoo), eVTOL power systems (Joby, Archer, Lilium), aerospace power electronics (Space

X, Relativity, Rocket Lab), robotics hardware labs, or defense programs where you actually built and tested hardware. If you cut your teeth on a Formula SAE Electric or solar car team and then went pro in high-voltage systems — we definitely want to talk.

Not a fit if: Your background is semiconductor process engineering, fab NPI, or primarily low-voltage microcontroller and PCB work. We need people who live at 48V and above, with hands on power hardware, wire, and batteries.

BS or MS in Electrical Engineering, Power Electronics, or related field. What you've built matters more than where you went to school.

• Extreme bias for action — you'd rather build and test a prototype this week than perfect a design for a month
• Rigoro…