EE Hardware Design Engineer

Department: TEC Electrical & Battery

Experience Level: 3–5 Years

Location: Chennai, India

Position Type: Full-Time

As an EE Hardware Design Engineer, you will own the physical schematic capture, component selection, and multi-layer PCB layout for our in-house aviation-grade electronics. Your core focus will be designing the physical hardware boards that run our critical sub-system - specifically Battery Management Systems (BMS), Traction Battery Pack electronics (cell supervisory nodes), low-power control stages for HV/LV DC-DC converters, and interface electronics for the Battery Thermal Management System (BTMS). You will maintain momentum on internal hardware revisions, ensuring robust signal integrity and strict compliance with aerospace environmental standards to support aircraft-level integration.

• Targeted Hardware Design: Architect and design high-reliability circuits across four core pillars:

• BMS & Pack Electronics: High-precision cell-voltage monitoring, temperature sensing networks, and active/passive balancing circuits.

• HV/LV Converters: Low-power control stages, isolated gate drivers, and feedback loops for switching power topologies.

• BTMS Interfaces: Sensor aggregation and control circuitry for thermal management pumps, valves, and heating elements.

• Schematic Capture & PCB Layout: Design high-density, multi-layer, high-reliability PCBs using Altium Designer or KiCAD, moving seamlessly from conceptual architecture to production-ready Gerber files.

• High-Speed & Mixed-Signal Layout: Implement strict board-level design techniques for high-speed communication buses (CAN-FD, SPI, differential signaling, ARINC) and mixed-signal layouts to isolate noisy high-power switching elements from sensitive control logic.

• Design for Compliance: Apply board-level design rules for creepage, clearance, shielding, and grounding to ensure hardware passes rigorous RTCA DO-160 EMI/EMC, vibration and thermal qualification testing.

• With Mechanical & Electromechanical Teams: Collaborate on board outlines, connector placements, keep-out zones, and mounting structures to ensure the physical PCBs fit perfectly within battery enclosures and avionics bays, accounting for structural vibration and thermal management interfaces (TIMs).

• With Firmware Engineers: Co-design the hardware-software interface, defining pin mappings, micro-controller peripheral allocations, sensor sampling rates, and hardware-level safety interrupts or fault line controls.

• With EWIS & Harnessing Teams: Align on connector selections, pin-out definitions, and shield termination architectures to guarantee seamless physical interconnection between your PCBs and the aircraft's wire harness.

• With V&V and Testing Teams: Support the lab validation team during board bring-up, hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing, and environmental qualification (DO-160), providing debugging support for any unexpected electrical anomalies.

• Experience: 3 to 5 years of dedicated electronics hardware design and PCB layout experience (EV powertrain, battery systems, or aerospace sectors preferred).

• PCB Tool Mastery: Deep, hands-on proficiency with Altium Designer, KiCAD, or Cadence Allegro.

• Industry Certifications: Strong foundational knowledge of IPC layout guidelines; IPC-CID or IPC-CID+ certification is highly preferred.

• Lab Troubleshooting: Excellent hands-on lab skills using oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and spectrum analyzers to bring up, debug, and patch initial prototype revisions.

• Strong EE Basics : Solid understanding of HW level protocols, MCU programming interfaces, Good PCB design practices, SI/PI Analysis, Power Budgeting, Signal conditioning, Protection circuits (for ESD, BCI, etc)

• Familiarity with hardware design principles aligned with RTCA DO-254 design assurance.

• Basic understanding of thermal management at the PCB level (thermal vias, copper pours, insulated metal substrates).

• Experience working with Altium Designer for component library management, schematic capture & PCB Design

• Exposure shipping multiple electronic PCB designs to fabrication, Building and maintaining production ready hardware designs

• Experience in version control / change management for Electrical & Electronics Hardware Design projects.

• Exposure in designing HW to meet specific standard compliances. Ideal candidates would have gone through complete product lifecycle from requirements capture to certification testing & ultimately achieving standards compliant product.