Contract Firmware Engineer Jobs in Reno, NV (NOW HIRING)

At Amperesand, you own validation of the power electronics that go into our solid-state transformers. As the technical validation lead for a major SST subsystem, you will take it from first bring-up through design validation, qualification, and continuous regression: building the test systems, defining the strategy, and holding the bar for what it means for high-power, high-voltage hardware to work flawlessly.

• Serve as the technical validation lead for an assigned SST subsystem, owning the validation strategy, plan, and schedule from initial design validation through production ramp and sustaining releases.
• Design, develop, and maintain test systems for high-voltage, high-current power electronics, including load banks, source/sink and back-to-back converter setups, and thermal chambers.
• Characterize and validate the electrical, thermal, and performance behavior of our products across prototype, pre-production, and production builds: efficiency and loss breakdown, switching behavior, gate drive integrity, insulation coordination, derating, and margin to limits.
• Own the regression suite for your subsystem so that every hardware revision and firmware release is held to the same bar and automate it so it runs continuously without hand-holding.
• Trace each product requirement to the test that proves it, and make coverage gaps visible early rather than at the end of a build.
• Drive root cause analysis on failures and field escapes, from component-level debug through full-system interaction and follow fixes through to verified closure.
• Define the manufacturing test specification for volume production and transfer test systems and know-how to internal and contract manufacturing teams.
• Innovate test system design to meet accuracy, cycle time, cost, safety, and other performance factors. Quantify measurement uncertainty rather than assuming it.
• Collaborate closely with hardware design, firmware, magnetics, mechanical, and systems teams from early architecture reviews onward, and push for design-for-test and design-for-validation features before layouts are frozen.
• Mentor engineers and technicians on high-voltage practice, measurement technique, and debug methodology. Review test plans and results across the team.
• Establish and uphold high-voltage safety practices in the lab, including interlocks, procedures, and training.
• Challenge ideas and decisions with reasoning from first principles.
• Travel to different facilities worldwide to collaborate with teams and deploy our solutions.

• BS or MS in Electrical or Computer Engineering.
• 6+ years of hands-on experience in test, validation, or integration engineering, with substantial time spent on power electronics.
• Demonstrated ownership of a product or subsystem through a full validation cycle, from first bring-up and design validation to production and sustaining regression.
• Deep understanding of power electronics principles: switching converter topologies, magnetics, gate drive, control loops, high-voltage and high-current systems, and power conversion technologies.
• Strong hands-on high-voltage lab skills and a rigorous, safety-first approach to working at power.
• Solid experience with PCBA schematics and debugging hardware down to the component level.
• Fluency with oscilloscopes, high-voltage differential probes, current shunts and Rogowski coils, power analyzers, multimeters, dielectric withstand testers, and thermal instrumentation such as thermocouples and IR imaging.
• Comfort with the data side of validation: structured results, dashboards, and statistical analysis that make a decision obvious.
• Be engaged, proactive, and positive when taking on challenging tasks, owning assignments, and taking accountability for personal and overall team success.

• Experience with grid-tied inverters and active front ends, or DC fast charging.
• Familiarity with partial discharge, dielectric withstand, and insulation coordination against standards such as IEC 61800-5-1, UL 1741, or IEEE 1547.
• SiC or GaN device characterization, including double-pulse testing, switching loss measurement, and short-circuit behavior.
• EMC pre-compliance testing.
• Grounding and shielding design for fast-switching systems.
• HALT/HASS, accelerated life testing, or reliability engineering exposure.
• Experience using system-level languages (such as Golang, Rust, C, C++, etc.) to automate systems, along with Python for instrument control and data analysis.