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Palo Alto, California, United States
Onsite
The Battery Engineering team at Pivotal is seeking a hands-on Battery Test Engineer to own the design and execution of battery performance characterization, thermal-runaway, abuse, environmental, and durability testing. This engineer will translate system risks and requirements into safe, instrumented, repeatable tests at the cell and pack levels, then convert test results into defensible engineering evidence and actionable design improvements.
Own test planning and hands-on execution for lithium-ion cells and aircraft battery packs.
Plan and execute electrical and thermal performance characterization of cell candidates and prototype packs, including capacity, DCIR, power capability, mission-profile cycling, and thermal response across temperature.
Operate high-power battery cyclers, cell cyclers, and environmental chambers, and maintain test profiles, data pipelines, and test-article configuration records.
Deliver correlation-ready datasets to the simulation team and support model-versus-test comparison.
Design, build, and execute thermal-runaway initiation, propagation, containment, venting, and mitigation tests, including fabrication of test articles, trigger methods, fixtures, and instrumentation appropriate to test objectives.
Develop environmental and durability tests covering temperature, thermal cycling, altitude or low-pressure exposure, humidity, vibration, mechanical shock, and transportation conditions as applicable.
Define test objectives, hazards, instrumentation needs, data-acquisition architecture, trigger logic, sampling rates, acceptance criteria, and stop conditions.
Prepare test articles, fixtures, chambers, power equipment, cooling systems, sensors, high-speed video, thermal imaging, and data-acquisition systems.
Lead test readiness reviews, job-hazard analyses, emergency planning, exclusion-zone definition, and coordination with EHS, facilities, fire-safety, and external laboratories.
Execute testing safely, monitor tests in real time, respond to anomalies, and protect personnel, facilities, test assets, and data integrity.
Analyze temperature, voltage, current, pressure, gas, flame, ejecta, and propagation behavior, as applicable to the test objective and facility capability.
Author clear test plans, procedures, reports, nonconformance records, root-cause assessments, and design recommendations.
Support model correlation and work with design engineers to improve containment, cooling, sensing, venting, and protection strategies.
Manage external test laboratories, including statement-of-work development, setup reviews, witnessing, data acceptance, and issue resolution.
Maintain calibrated instrumentation, safe lab practices, test configuration control, data traceability, and lessons learned.
Support transportation and environmental compliance test programs, including UN 38.3 activities, when applicable to the product and program phase.
Three or more years of hands-on battery, environmental, abuse, reliability, or aerospace hardware testing experience.
Experience designing instrumented tests and selecting thermocouples, voltage and current measurement, pressure sensing, thermal imaging, and data-acquisition hardware.
Working knowledge of lithium-ion battery hazards, high-voltage safety, stored-energy hazards, fire risk, and safe test operations.
Experience developing test fixtures, procedures, hazard controls, and technical reports.
Ability to troubleshoot hardware, instrumentation, wiring, communications, and data-quality issues in the laboratory.
Ability to work on-site and safely support physically hands-on test setup and execution.
Experience conducting or witnessing battery thermal-runaway, propagation, overcharge, external heating, short-circuit, crush, or penetration testing.
Experience with environmental chambers, vibration systems, thermal cycling, altitude chambers, shock testing, and high-power battery pack cyclers (e.g., Chroma, etc.) or cell cyclers (e.g., Biologic, Arbin).
Experience with electric aircraft, EV, UAV, aerospace, defense, or other safety-critical energy systems.
Familiarity with UN 38.3 and relevant battery or aerospace environmental-test standards, with the judgment to confirm applicability before defining a compliance plan.
Experience with LabVIEW, Python, MATLAB, Dewesoft, NI hardware, or comparable data-acquisition and analysis environments.
Experience with fire-safe test cells, exhaust and gas handling, remote monitoring, blast or fragment protection, and emergency-response coordination.
Experience managing outside laboratories and reviewing supplier test evidence.
Has a strong laboratory and test-floor mindset and takes personal ownership of safe execution and high-quality data.
Balances urgency with disciplined readiness reviews, hazard controls, and configuration management.
Can move from requirement or failure concern to a practical test method, fixture, procedure, and evidence package.
Communicates unexpected results quickly and objectively and helps the team turn failures into design learning.
