Lead Controls Engineer - Power Electronics

The posting, as Proper Voltage wrote it

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About Proper Voltage
Proper Voltage is unlocking the next generation of battery technology across robotics, data centers, and defense.

We're building intelligent battery systems that make advanced chemistries (sodium-ion, lithium-titanate, lithium-silicon) work in products that were never designed for them. Humanoid robots can upgrade power systems without redesigning their entire platform. Data centers get safer, cheaper backup power. Drones and autonomous vehicles get higher energy density without lengthy integration cycles.

If you want to work on hard engineering problems that matter this is the place.

Job Overview
Proper Voltage designs and builds safety-critical battery energy storage systems. This role leads control design for our bidirectional DC/DC power conversion stage — the current and voltage loops, mode transitions, and protection behavior of multiphase interleaved converters — from plant model through validated hardware.
This role sits where power electronics control meets software. You will model the plant, design and discretize the compensators, and prove them in closed-loop simulation running the actual control code. Then you hand the firmware team a design they can implement without guesswork: coefficients, scaling, sample timing, delay budget, limits, and the margins the implementation must preserve.
You will work as a pair with our Lead Firmware Engineer – Power Conversion Control. You own what the loop should do and why; they own how it runs on the silicon. When measured loop gain disagrees with the model, you find out which one is wrong.
What you'll do

• Control design for four-switch buck-boost power stages and successor topologies: current and voltage loops, feedforward, multiphase interleaved operation, and phase current balancing.
• Plant models and closed-loop simulation models for each converter, kept current with the hardware and used as the reference for firmware verification.
• Operating mode and protection behavior: the transition logic, thresholds, and response-time requirements that firmware implements.
• Control design specifications — the documented interface between control design and firmware implementation.
• Control loop verification: model-to-measurement correlation, loop gain and stability margin characterization, transient response, and stability across the full operating envelope.
• Control performance evidence supporting UL 1973, UL 1998, and UL 9540 certification.

Responsibilities

• Derive small-signal plant models for buck, boost, four-switch buck-boost, and multiphase interleaved topologies, including coupled-inductor effects, right-half-plane zeros, and operating-point variation across the envelope.
• Design compensat

[…]
olated and differential probes, current probes, electronic loads, bidirectional supplies, and a network or frequency response analyzer for loop gain measurement.

• A track record of written control design specifications that another engineer implemented successfully.

Preferred Qualifications

• MS or PhD in Electrical Engineering with a focus in power electronics or control systems.
• Bidirectional and multiphase interleaved converter control, including coupled inductors, current sharing, and phase balancing between paralleled phases.
• Average current mode control specifically, as distinct from voltage mode or peak current mode, and feedforward design for four-switch buck-boost converters.
• Large-signal behavior: buck-to-boost mode transitions, discontinuous conduction boundaries, saturation recovery, and limit cycles.
• Wide-bandgap power stages (GaN, SiC) and their effect on control — sense chain noise, blanking, and dead-time sensitivity.
• Digital power controllers such as dsPIC33C, TI C2000, or STM32G4, at the level of knowing what their PWM and ADC architectures allow.
• Hardware-in-the-loop or real-time simulation platforms such as PLECS RT Box, Typhoon HIL, or OPAL-RT.
• Python numerical tools (NumPy, SciPy, python-control) for control analysis.
• Battery energy storage, EV charging, photovoltaic inverter, or grid-interactive converter experience, including BMS interaction such as current limit negotiation and precharge.
• Functional safety and certification exposure: IEC 61508 concepts, UL 1973, UL 1998, UL 9540, and FMEA.
• Version control and code review applied to models and analysis scripts, not only firmware.

Compensation & Benefits

• Salary range: $150,000 – $175,000 depending on experience and qualifications.
• Equity options as part of the compensation package.
• Comprehensive healthcare benefits (medical, dental, vision).
• Generous paid time off and paid holidays (PTO) policy.

Ready to work on power systems that matter? Let's talk.