Power Electronics Engineer - Prototype Development

About American Turbines

The power grid was built for a world that no longer exists. Centralized generation, hundred-mile transmission lines, decade-long permitting cycles. Meanwhile, demand is exploding: AI data centers, industrial electrification, remote operations that need megawatts yesterday and can't wait for utilities to catch up.

American Turbines is designing small modular gas turbines, purpose-built for distributed power generation. Machines designed from a blank sheet to be manufactured at scale, clustered in arrays. Hundreds of units operating in parallel, dynamically matching load like a compute cluster matches demand. We are a seed-stage company backed by the investors behind SpaceX, Boom Supersonic, and Hadrian.

About the Role

The Power Electronics Engineer will own the power electronics for American Turbines' first turbine: converting the generator's output into the 800VDC we deliver to load, and every electrical component choice along the way. Shaft speed on a machine like this is likely to vary with load, so expect to be designing for a moving target rather than a fixed input.

You will design the power stage, select and procure the components, and get it running alongside a live turbine on the test rig, working through real constraints: thermal limits, fast load transients, and a system that has to hold up over hundreds of hours of testing, not just a bench demo. You'll also work closely with the Controls Engineer on the telemetry and sensing handoff between the power stage and the embedded controls.

This is not a role where you design in isolation and hand off a board to someone else. You will be present for testing, watching your power electronics perform under real engine conditions, and iterating from what you see.

What We're Looking For

Experience designing power electronics for variable-speed or high-frequency rotating machinery, motor drives, or similarly demanding electromechanical systems. You're comfortable working when the electrical architecture isn't fully specified yet, and you can reason from first principles about tradeoffs like direct-drive vs. geared, or motoring-capable vs. separate starter, not just execute against a fixed spec.

You understand the tradeoffs between efficiency, thermal margin, and component cost, and you can make a call under time pressure rather than waiting for a perfect answer. You've seen your own hardware fail during test and know how to debug it fast.

Compensation

$175,000 to $225,000 base.

Generous stock package.

Medical, vision, and dental care.

2% matching on 401(k).