Staff Engineer Jobs in Irvine, CA

This position may be filled at the Senior or Staff level, depending on the candidate's qualifications and experience.

Key Responsibilities:

• Serve as the lead technical interface for U.S. OEM customers on battery cell design, development, validation, and industrialization.

• Provide technical leadership in customer discussions covering cell architecture, materials, electrochemical performance, safety, lifetime, fast charging, and manufacturability.

• Represent Gotion's cell design and manufacturing capabilities, technology roadmap, product portfolio, and development maturity to OEM customers.

• Translate customer vehicle-, pack-, and system-level requirements into cell-level design requirements, targets, and engineering trade-offs.

• Build a deep understanding of customer applications, duty cycles, operating environments, and pack constraints to guide optimal cell and pack integration.

• Develop cell design solutions that balance energy density, power capability, safety, durability, cost, and manufacturing feasibility.

• Lead technical alignment with customers on cell requirements, design specifications, interface definitions, validation plans, and acceptance criteria.

• Lead cell design reviews, technical workshops, and engineering discussions with customers and internal teams from RFI/RFQ through development, launch, and mass production.

• Develop test methods and validation strategies to evaluate cell-level and cell-in-pack performance, safety, reliability, and durability.

• Analyze and interpret cell test data to assess design performance, identify technical risks, and recommend design improvements.

• Lead root-cause investigations and corrective actions for cell design, performance, safety, and manufacturing issues; clearly communicate findings and recommendations to customers.

• Provide technical leadership throughout the complete cell development lifecycle, including concept development, design optimization, design verification, manufacturing scale-up, launch, and post-launch improvement.

• Collaborate with cross functional teams to develop DFMEAs and PFMEAs, identify critical design and process characteristics, and coordinate FMEA reviews with customers.

• Support customer-facing quality and industrialization activities, including APQP, PPAP, design reviews, process reviews, and technical audits.

• Build and maintain strong working relationships with OEM cell, battery pack, vehicle integration, safety, validation, manufacturing, and quality teams.

• Collaborate across R&D, manufacturing, quality, and intellectual-property teams to advance cell designs, application solutions, and proprietary technologies.

• Travel domestically and internationally up to 30% to support customer engagements, design reviews, testing, manufacturing activities, and product launches.

Qualifications:

• Master's degree in chemistry, chemical engineering, materials science, electrochemistry, or a related technical discipline.

• Seven or more years of experience in lithium-ion battery cell development, characterization, testing, or validation.

• Demonstrated experience completing at least one full lithium-ion battery cell product-development cycle, from concept and requirements definition through cell design, validation, manufacturing scale-up, production launch, and post-launch support.

• Hands-on experience designing, executing, and interpreting lithium-ion cell performance, life, and degradation tests.

• Experience with incremental capacity analysis and differential voltage analysis, including dQ/dV and dV/dQ methods.

• Working knowledge of electrochemical characterization techniques, including GITT, EIS, CV, and PITT.

• Familiarity with lithium-ion cell manufacturing processes, including electrode manufacturing, cell assembly, electrolyte filling, formation, aging, and end-of-line testing.

• Strong understanding of cell chemistry, material behavior, electrochemical performance, aging, and degradation mechanisms.

• Demonstrated ability to connect cell design and test results with manufacturing-process capability and end-product performance.

• Strong analytical, problem-solving, and root-cause-analysis skills.

• Ability to work effectively with global and cross-functional teams.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English.

Preferred/Nice to have:

• Experience developing or optimizing lithium-ion cells for fast-charging applications.

• Knowledge of applicable battery safety standards and regulations, such as UN 38.3, UL, IEC, GB, and FMVSS requirements.

• Experience working directly with automotive or electric-vehicle OEM customers.

• Experience developing DFMEAs and PFMEAs and supporting APQP, PPAP, product qualification, change management, and customer audits.

• Hands-on laboratory experience with electrochemical characterization techniques such as GITT, EIS, CV, and PITT.

• Hands-on experience with material-characterization methods such as XRD, FTIR, Raman spectroscopy, SEM, or NMR.

• Experience analyzing large battery datasets using Python, MATLAB, or comparable data-analysis tools.