Principal Firmware Engineer – Power Conversion Control

🔥 0 minutes ago

🏄 California – Remote

🏄 California – Remote

💵 $165k - $205k / year

⏰ Full Time

🔴 Lead

🔧 Hardware Engineer

Apply Now

Find Similar Remote Jobs

Set Up Email Alert For New Jobs

📊 Check your resume score for this job

Improve your chances of getting an interview by checking your resume score before you apply.

Upload Resume

Proper Voltage

WebsiteLinkedInAll Job Openings

11 - 50 employees

Founded 2020

🏭 Manufacturing

⚡ Energy

☁️ SaaS

Manufacturing • Energy • SaaS

Proper Voltage is a B2B technology company providing a Battery Operating System (bOS) — a control layer and software platform that bridges advanced battery chemistries and real-world product power systems. The platform enables product manufacturers and battery makers to adopt new battery technologies safely and without hardware redesign or recertification, optimizing energy use, safety, and deployment speed. Proper Voltage focuses on integrating diverse battery chemistries, simplifying certification and integration cycles, and delivering software-driven power management and monitoring for commercial and industrial products.

📋 Description

• Implement real-time control loops for four-switch buck-boost power stages and successor topologies, including multiphase interleaved operation and phase current balancing • Own and maintain the portable, MCU-agnostic DC/DC control library, including compensators, mode arbitration, scheduler and ISR architecture, and platform abstraction • Implement converter protection firmware, including cycle-by-cycle current limit, overvoltage and undervoltage protection, thermal derating, gate-drive fault handling, and safe-state transitions • Derive plant models and design discrete-time compensators for buck, boost, and four-switch buck-boost topologies • Implement deterministic C control loops within fixed cycle budgets using fixed-point or single-precision arithmetic • Architect and maintain fast control and slower supervisory ISR tasks with measured jitter and documented worst-case execution time • Configure and validate PWM, ADC, comparator, DAC, DMA, trigger timing, dead-time, and hardware-independent protection paths • Implement operating-mode arbitration across constant current, constant voltage, constant power, current limit, soft-start, buck-to-boost transition, phase shedding, and charge/discharge reversal • Bring up converter hardware in the lab through full operating-envelope characterization • Measure and correlate loop gain, transient response, ripple, efficiency, and thermal derating • Build and maintain simulation and hardware-in-the-loop infrastructure to detect control regressions • Author specifications, requirements, and traceable verification evidence for certification review • Review control and embedded code and contribute to hardware design reviews

🎯 Requirements

• BS in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or equivalent demonstrated capability • Six or more years developing production embedded firmware in C for resource-constrained real-time systems • Direct hands-on experience closing control loops in firmware on switched-mode power converters • Demonstrated ability to specify topology, control mode, switching and sampling frequencies, compensator structure, crossover, and phase margin for personally validated converter hardware • Working command of discrete-time control, including bilinear/Tustin and zero-order-hold mappings, sampling and computational delay, aliasing, and quantization • Fluency with high-resolution PWM, PWM-triggered ADCs, programmable sample instants, analog comparators, DAC fast-fault paths, and DMA • Fixed-point arithmetic competence, including Q-format scaling, range and overflow analysis, and saturation behavior • Ability to justify fixed-point versus floating-point decisions on execution-time grounds • Deterministic ISR design under hard timing constraints, including measuring and defending worst-case execution time • Independent laboratory capability with oscilloscopes, isolated and differential probes, current probes, electronic loads, bidirectional supplies, and network or frequency-response analyzers • Version control, code review, specifications, and test evidence experience • DS PIC experience is a significant advantage, including dsPIC33C/dsPIC33CK/dsPIC33CH, MPLAB X, and XC16 • Experience with bidirectional and multiphase interleaved converter control, average current mode control, GaN/SiC power stages, battery energy storage, EV charging, photovoltaic inverters, or grid-interactive converters is preferred • Familiarity with IEC 61508, ISO 26262, UL 1973, UL 1998, UL 9540, FMEA/FMEDA, MISRA C, static analysis, unit testing, HIL/PIL, SPICE/LTspice, PLECS, MATLAB/Simulink, CAN/CANopen, and embedded-bus firmware updates is preferred • No visa sponsorship is available

🏖️ Benefits

• Equity options as part of the compensation package • Comprehensive healthcare benefits (medical, dental, vision) • Generous paid time off and paid holidays (PTO) policy