Ready to change the world?

We are reinventing how products are delivered around the world by unlocking the path not yet traveled. Our company was founded in 2015 and is backed by Silicon Valley’s most prominent VCs, including YCombinator, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Icon Ventures. Volansi provides fast on-demand aerial delivery service for time-critical shipments over long ranges. We build and operate long-range, high-payload drones for commercial, defense, and humanitarian applications. Leveraging drone technology as a transportation method, we help our customers gain control of their supply chain and save millions of dollars on downtime and inventory costs. Our work came from the immediate need for critical delivery of parts to drastically reduce downtime for an automotive company. From this idea, our founders have scaled the company into a team of highly skilled and motivated individuals to serve critical delivery markets. 

Interested?

Volansi is seeking a Senior Electrical Propulsion Engineer with a passion for robotics and aviation to join its growing engineering team developing autonomous aircraft. This engineer will work closely with mechanical, software, and other cross functional teams and design propulsion systems, from battery to mechanical output, for a wide range of VTOL aircraft. This may include the design of prototype motors, inverters, and DC/DCs converters from 0.5-200kW. This is a hands-on position. Engineers are responsible for driving their projects through from concept design to delivery and support of hardware. Optimizing designs for reliability, weight, and efficiency will be a focus.

What you will do:

• Duties include overall electric propulsion system design, modeling, and optimization
• Subsystem design and prototyping, schematic capture, prototype bring-up and debugging, hardware bug tracking, functional verification and signal characterization
• Collaborate with mechanical engineers to optimize placement of high power modules / components and bus bars
• Create clear and readable schematics for power electronics boards
• Select high powered electronic actuators and manage integration with the Software team
• Component selection for minimum mass and maximum reliability
• Work with PCB designers to create reliable and low-weight layoutsWrite requirements, participate in DFMEAs, create and carry out test and validation plans
• Support through production and test

Required:

• Strong EE fundamentals, including familiarity with: Electrical propulsion, preferably for VTOL aircraft, ability to model batteries, motors, controllers, understanding of power conversion, signal conditioning and conversion (ADCs, filters) and discrete semiconductor design (FETs, BJTs, Diodes)
• 2+ years of experience in analog, digital or mixed-signal design principles including designs using sensors, operating amplifiers: A/D and D/A converters, and filters
• B.S. in electrical engineering or related discipline
• Schematic capture and PCB design
• US citizenship is required by the US Government due to security clearance requirements
• Experience with component selection and electrical power generation
• Experience with Power electronics, DC motors, Inverters, and ESCs
• Competence with test equipment such as oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, thermal chambers, current-probes, and automation of tests
• Completed (designed / built / tested) high voltage / high power designs
• Familiarity with standard interfaces such as Ethernet, CAN, I2C, SPI, PCIe, USB, etc.
• Familiarity with common MCU, CPU, FPGA devices and technologies
• Comfortable with a variety of electronic CAD tools (Altium preferred, Eagle and others acceptable)
• Strong written and verbal communication skills
• Ability to work in a fast paced, autonomously driven, and demanding start-up atmosphere

Desired:

• M.S. / Ph.D. in relevant discipline with a focus in power electronics
• 2+ years of working experience in relevant industryExperience in hybrid-electric design and aircraft power systems
• Familiarity with Altium Designer
• Exposure to regulatory certification
• Experience design-for-reliability, including use of DFMEA and fault trees
• Experience with battery systems

Why Volansi?

• Comprehensive health benefits for you and your dependent(s)
• Opportunities for internal career growth
• Healthy meals and snacks provided and commuter benefits
• Flexible vacation and company paid holidays
• 401k and stock options
• SF Bay Area offices are dog-friendly!