Sr. Staff Electrical Engineer

Hanwha Q CELLS Co., Ltd., is one of the world's largest and most recognized photovoltaic manufacturers for its high-performance, high-quality solar cells and modules. It is headquartered in Seoul, South Korea (Global Executive HQ) and Talheim, Germany (Technology & Innovation HQ). Through its growing global business network spanning Europe, North America, Asia, South America, Africa, and the Middle East, the company provides excellent services and long-term partnerships to its customers in the utility, commercial, government, and residential markets. Hanwha Q CELLS is a flagship company of Hanwha Group, a FORTUNE Global 500 firm and a Top 7 business enterprise in South Korea.
 
Hanwha Q CELLS has the commitment to establish itself as a technology powerhouse of next-generation energy solutions by investing in exploring new technology. As a manifestation of this investment is the establishment of a Future Energy Technology Center in Santa Clara, CA. This center will help the company’s mission of providing affordable and smart energy solutions through technology and innovation to create a sustainable future for the planet. We are expanding our business by offering revolutionary energy systems to residential customers including ESS, MLPE (power optimizers, micro-inverters), EV charging solutions, and Smart IoT with world-class solutions.
 
POSITION OVERVIEW
This essential leadership role requires active participation in current engineering projects as part of the Core Technology Development team based in Santa Clara. In addition, you will also be collaborating with the Energy System Center in Korea on key technologies that could potentially be adopted for the next generation of products. One area of collaboration is to be part of a launch team that will be responsible for introducing our new products under development for the US market in areas of design optimization in terms of efficiency, robustness, cost reduction, and standard certification. As you are supporting the product introduction, will acquire an essential skill that will be imperative for the next generation of products.  

RESPONSIBILITIES

- Participate in all phases of the product development lifecycle: Concepts, Requirements, Design, Prototype, Testing, Release, and Support for our solar energy system. However, in the beginning, the focus will be the introduction of our existing products in the US market.
- Lead the effort in certifying the products for the various compliance tests related to power generation. 
- Support and resolve engineering problems found during production and field. This could lead to a redesign of the PCBA for which you will be working with the development engineering team.
- Support cost reduction efforts by working closely with the development engineering, the operations team, and our EMS partner. This could require design modifications and the selection of more cost-effective parts.
- Participate in digital and analog design, schematic capture, and PCB layout for new products, including CPU/memory/IO/UART/ADC/FPGA/logic circuits and power supply design.
- Collaborate with external and internal customers, such as Product Management, Field Service, Operations, and other Engineering teams during the product development life cycle.
- Develop supporting engineering documentation including hardware requirements, design documentation, design verification test plans, and production test/calibration requirements.
- Provide time/cost inputs to the project team and actively communicate with the cross-functional teams to ensure schedule, cost, and performance alignment.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

- Bachelor’s degree or higher in Electrical Engineering from an accredited institution.
- Minimum 5 years of experience in designing and developing power systems (DC/DC converters, DC/AC inverters) preferably for renewable energy or related applications.
- Minimum 10 years of industrial experience in product development that electrical and electronics engineering.
- Familiarity with various compliance tests related to FCC for EMI/EMC as well as specific ones related to solar energy generation such as UL (1741) and IEEE (1547).
- Good understanding of MOSFET-based bridges and their applications in designing boost converters and inverters for grid power generation.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

- Familiar with PCB design tools such as Altium and test software tools such as LabView.
- Knowledge of smart grid, and electrical automation applications using IoT architectures.
- Experience with RF, control, and low-power electronics design.
- Knowledge of manufacturing and product test process.
- Experience with bench test equipment such as oscilloscope, power meter, power loads, spectrum analyzer, vector analyzer, logical analyzer, signal generator, and communication protocol analyzer.

POSITION CRITERIA

- Demonstrate a leadership style that is consistent with QCells expectations of leaders (ethical, passionate, accountable, efficient, transparent, learner). Capable of leading change in a cross-functional environment that requires cross-region, site, and/or global collaboration (NA and Asia).
- Self-motivated with strong interpersonal skills to build trust and influence others.
- Agility to learn new development processes and tools.
- Ability to work independently as an individual contributor as well as a team member.
- Appreciation for the trade-offs necessary to achieve designs that meet performance requirements and cost-objective solutions.
- Strong problem-solving and debugging skills.
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills.