Principal Test Engineer

Location: This position will be primarily located in the Greater Denver, CO area, with travel expected to Houston, Texas five to six times per year.

The Principal Test Engineer will serve as a master in electrical engineering, establishing technical direction, standards, and best practices. This individual will be the facilitator of product development, validation, and de-risking activities. They will be responsible for the end-to-end planning and execution of advanced validation cycles within On’s own and partner facilities. The primary goals are to de-risk On Energy’s current and future product line system architecture through rigorous lab-based stress testing and to bridge the gap between lab results and reality by maintaining and operating lab capabilities to support training, troubleshooting, and customer engagement.

Key Responsibilities

Test Orchestration and Planning

• Facility Coordination: Serve as the primary technical point of contact for principal investigators and facility managers.
• Test Protocol Development: Design and document detailed test procedures that utilize laboratory Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) research assets to validate On Energy’s performance under extreme conditions (e.g., rapid frequency response, grid and load transitions, or grid instability). Synthesize product design criteria, industry standards, and customer requests into detailed workplans.
• Compliance & Safety: Ensure all On Energy hardware and test procedures comply with industry safety standards and local Site Operations protocols.

De-risking & Technical Validation

• Failure Mode Discovery: Use laboratory controlled environment to identify edge-case failures that are impossible to test in live field environments.
• Data Translation: Analyze high-fidelity data streams from laboratory sensors to provide actionable feedback to the On Energy product and project teams, as well as to On Energy component vendors, for firmware/hardware iterations.
• Verification: Report on data collected relative to product requirements and performance criteria for internal and customer review.

On Energy Commissioning and Training Coordination

• Staff Mentorship: Use the testing phase at NLR as a live training ground for On Energy’s field commissioning staff, familiarizing them with system behavior, diagnostics, and recovery.
• Manual Development: Convert lab-based learnings into field-ready Commissioning SOPs and Troubleshooting Guides.
• Staff Rotation Management: Coordinate the rotation of On Energy field technicians through the NLR facility to ensure knowledge transfer is uniform across the commissioning department.

Experience & Requirements

• 12+ years of electrical engineering experience, recognized as a domain authority of product development, test validation and de-risking activities in the scope of power systems and grid-tied technologies
• Education: B.S./M.S. in Electrical Engineering, Systems Engineering, or a related field.
• Familiarity: Prior experience testing and modeling grid code compliance of large inverter-based resources. Experience working at a National Lab or within the DOE framework is preferred.
• Domain Expertise: Deep understanding of Energy Storage Systems (BESS), Power Electronics (Inverters/Rectifiers), and Grid-Forming technologies.
• The "Liaison" Factor: Exceptional communication skills—the ability to speak "Research" to NLR scientists and "Deployment" to On Energy field technicians.

Work Environment

• This role will lead initiatives in Denver Colorado and Houston Texas with periodic travel to both along with other On Energy project sites for the transition of validated technologies.

#LI-AD1