Power Electronics Firmware Engineer
In-person · San Francisco, CA, US... more
In-person · San Francisco, CA, US... more
Job Description
Our mission at Base is to fix the power grid and enable affordable and reliable electricity for all. To do that, we are building America’s Next-Generation Power Company; the first engineering-led, technology-focused, R&D-driven electricity company. We are a team of tenacious engineers, operators, and creatives who have solved hard problems and are here to do it again.
We are looking for a Power Electronics Firmware Engineer with experience in power electronics control and real-time embedded systems to work closely with power electronics engineers, control engineers, and electrical engineers. You will be responsible for implementing, testing, and optimizing firmware for our mass-produced battery storage systems, ensuring safety, reliability, and compliance with regulatory standards.
This role is ideal for someone who has taken products from prototype to mass production and understands the complexities of safety-critical embedded software in a regulated environment.
Responsibilities:
- Develop real-time firmware for power electronics control, including inverter control, battery t, and grid interconnect algorithms.
- Work closely with power electronics and control engineers to implement DSP/Microcontroller-based control algorithms (e.g. PWM, phase-locked loops, active/reactive power control).
- Ensure firmware meets safety-critical requirements for regulatory compliance (e.g., UL 1741, IEEE 1547, ISO 26262).
- Collaborate with power electronics hardware and control engineers throughout the development cycle (sensor selection, validation, and hardware improvements).
- Interface with hardware and electrical engineers to integrate firmware with custom PCBs and power conversion systems.
- Implement and refine diagnostics, fault detection, and recovery mechanisms to improve system uptime and reliability.
- Conduct hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing, embedded simulation, and field validation to verify firmware performance.
- Develop bootloaders, over-the-air (OTA) update mechanisms, and secure firmware signing for fleet management.
- Debug firmware issues in prototype and production environments, using oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and serial debugging tools.
- Document firmware architecture, control logic, and regulatory compliance considerations.
Required Skills / Qualifications:
- 5+ years of experience in embedded firmware development, with a focus on power electronics, inverters, or motor control.
- Strong experience with C/C++ for embedded systems, including real-time constraints, memory management, and debugging.
- Experience developing real-time control algorithms for inverters, converters, or battery systems.
- Familiarity with digital signal processing (DSP), microcontrollers, and FPGA-based control.
- Experience working in a safety-critical, regulated environment (e.g., UL, IEC, ISO standards).
- Hands-on experience with embedded software debugging tools (oscilloscopes, JTAG, logic analyzers).
- Strong understanding of power electronics principles, including modulation techniques (PWM, SVM), power factor correction, and grid synchronization.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Experience with mass production firmware development for battery storage, inverters, or industrial power systems.
- Experience with hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing, MATLAB/Simulink, or model-based design.
- Familiarity with ARM Cortex-M, TI C2000, STM32, or similar microcontroller families used in power control.
- Knowledge of embedded cybersecurity practices, including secure bootloaders and firmware updates.
- Experience with CAN, SPI, I2C, and Modbus communication protocols for power electronics integration.
- Understanding of fleet management for distributed energy systems.
If you’re passionate about tackling one of the most critical challenges of our time, now is the time to join us. Together, we can usher in a new era of American energy abundance by developing the hardware, software, and deployment operations that make it possible.