Senior Staff Mechanical Design Engineer

Company Overview   

Amperesand is reinventing how the world powers its most critical systems.

We are facing a once-in-a-generation opportunity for infrastructure disruption. Electricity demand is skyrocketing, driven by AI factories, electric vehicles, and modern industrial growth. Energy supply is shifting to incorporate a more diverse mix of resources – including solar, gas, and batteries – at a massive scale.

And yet the power infrastructure behind our latest mega-projects hasn’t meaningfully changed in nearly 100 years. Supply chains for today’s infrastructure equipment can’t match the pace and sophistication of critical energy projects. Amperesand is building hardware and software that rewrites this broken power infrastructure playbook to support a new era of energy abundance.

We’ve built a new class of intelligent, software-defined power infrastructure products leveraging a decade of advanced medium voltage Solid State Transformer research that’s now ready for commercial deployment.

Our products and solutions go far beyond the capabilities of traditional electrical equipment. We make power systems that are faster to deploy, dramatically smaller and more efficient, and capable of supporting modern, dynamic energy needs for tomorrow’s most demanding energy consumers.

Scalable in-house advanced manufacturing capability is our foundation for meeting timeline and quality expectation to serve infrastructure customers around the world.

Amperesand is led by breakthrough energy hardware development veterans and funded by top tier investors who share our vision of building a category-defining energy technology company.

With hubs in San Francisco, Reno, and Singapore, our global team is laser focused on building foundational technology to solve the most pressing problems in power infrastructure at scale.

Join us in building the power foundation of the future!

Role Summary: 

We are seeking a skilled Senior Staff Mechanical Design Engineer to join our team and contribute to the development of power electronics products.

The primary function of this position is to lead mechanical architecture and design strategy across multiple power converter platforms and voltage classes. You will own mechanical design for our complete system or power conversion module, selecting mechanical architecture and developing design concepts, including detailed design of complex custom mechanical parts across our power converter modules and our system design.  You will lead technical efforts for a small number of more junior mechanical engineers, but not people management. You will serve as the technical authority and escalation point for Staff and Senior mechanical engineers on the organization's toughest design problems, and will work closely with cross-functional teams, including manufacturing, test engineers, quality, and new product introduction (NPI) as the primary design point of contact to support and guide these teams as they work with our designs. 

Responsibilities:

• Own the multi-generation mechanical technology roadmap across product platforms.

• Mentor Staff and Senior mechanical engineers and lead design-review governance.

• Represent mechanical engineering in executive and leadership technical reviews.

• Drive build-vs-buy and make-vs-buy strategy at the program level.

• Serve as the primary design point of contact for cross-functional teams, guiding their work and connecting the dots between many inputs to develop a clear plan of attack on problems.

• Collaborate cross-functionally with electrical, thermal, firmware and controls, manufacturing, test, quality, reliability, and industrial design teams.

• Drive trade studies to inform system-level decisions on design architecture, materials, and manufacturing processes.

• Guide selection for structural, thermal, and electrical compatibility in high-voltage environments.

• Model and design complex electro-mechanical parts, including plastics, sheet metal, insulators, magnetic components, and high-voltage connectors, creating detailed 3D and 2D designs using CAD software.

• Define and execute validation test plans including structural, thermal, and environmental testing.

• Support root-cause analysis of design issues in pilot or production builds and lead iterative improvements.

• Perform mechanical design analysis, including structural FEA, thermal CFD, vibration, and fatigue assessments.

• Solve packaging challenges involving electrical isolation, sealing, thermal dissipation, EMI/EMC shielding, and mechanical shock/vibration.

• Create engineering documentation, tolerance stacks, BOMs, and release packages through PLM systems.

• Work closely with suppliers to optimize DFM, DFA, and tooling strategies for high-volume production.

• Contribute to the layout and design of integrated cooling systems including cold plates, thermal interfaces, and airflow paths.

• Develop assembly procedures and manufacturing instructions to support scalable production.

• Participate in mechanical FMEA and DVP&R activities across product lifecycle stages.

• Work with quality and reliability teams to meet performance, lifecycle, and safety targets.

• Set mechanical design standards and DFM/DFA guidelines used across the engineering organization.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering or a related field.

• 10+ years of experience in mechanical design for power electronics, automotive, industrial, or energy products.