Senior or Staff Battery Cell Engineer at Gotion, Inc. in Irvine, CA

This position may be filled at the Senior or Staff level, depending on the candidate’s qualifications and experience.

Key Responsibilities:

• Serve as the lead technical interface for U.S. OEM customers on battery cell design, development, validation, and industrialization.

• Provide technical leadership in customer discussions covering cell architecture, materials, electrochemical performance, safety, lifetime, fast charging, and manufacturability.

• Represent Gotion’s cell design and manufacturing capabilities, technology roadmap, product portfolio, and development maturity to OEM customers.

• Translate customer vehicle-, pack-, and system-level requirements into cell-level design requirements, targets, and engineering trade-offs.

• Build a deep understanding of customer applications, duty cycles, operating environments, and pack constraints to guide optimal cell and pack integration.

• Develop cell design solutions that balance energy density, power capability, safety, durability, cost, and manufacturing feasibility.

• Lead technical alignment with customers on cell requirements, design specifications, interface definitions, validation plans, and acceptance criteria.

• Lead cell design reviews, technical workshops, and engineering discussions with customers and internal teams from RFI/RFQ through development, launch, and mass production.

• Develop test methods and validation strategies to evaluate cell-level and cell-in-pack performance, safety, reliability, and durability.

• Analyze and interpret cell test data to assess design performance, identify technical risks, and recommend design improvements.

• Lead root-cause investigations and corrective actions for cell design, performance, safety, and manufacturing issues; clearly communicate findings and recommendations to customers.

• Provide technical leadership throughout the complete cell development lifecycle, including concept development, design optimization, design verification, manufacturing scale-up, launch, and post-launch improvement.

• Collaborate with cross functional teams to develop DFMEAs and PFMEAs, identify critical design and process characteristics, and coordinate FMEA reviews with customers.

• Support customer-facing quality and industrialization activities, including APQP, PPAP, design reviews, process reviews, and technical audits.

• Build and maintain strong working relationships with OEM cell, battery pack, vehicle integration, safety, validation, manufacturing, and quality teams.

• Collaborate across R&D, manufacturing, quality, and intellectual-property teams to advance cell designs, application solutions, and proprietary technologies.

• Travel domestically and internationally up to 30% to support customer engagements, design reviews, testing, manufacturing activities, and product launches.

Qualifications:

• Master’s degree in chemistry, chemical engineering, materials science, electrochemistry, or a related technical discipline.

• Seven or more years of experience in lithium-ion battery cell development, characterization, testing, or validation.

• Demonstrated experience completing at least one full lithium-ion battery cell product-development cycle, from concept and requirements definition through cell design, validation, manufacturing scale-up, production launch, and post-launch support.

• Hands-on experience designing, executing, and interpreting lithium-ion cell performance, life, and degradation tests.

• Experience with incremental capacity analysis and differential voltage analysis, including dQ/dV and dV/dQ methods.

• Working knowledge of electrochemical characterization techniques, including GITT, EIS, CV, and PITT.

• Familiarity with lithium-ion cell manufacturing processes, including electrode manufacturing, cell assembly, electrolyte filling, formation, aging, and end-of-line testing.

• Strong understanding of cell chemistry, material behavior, electrochemical performance, aging, and degradation mechanisms.

• Demonstrated ability to connect cell design and test results with manufacturing-process capability and end-product performance.

• Strong analytical, problem-solving, and root-cause-analysis skills.

• Ability to work effectively with global and cross-functional teams.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English.

Preferred/Nice to have:

• Experience developing or optimizing lithium-ion cells for fast-charging applications.

• Knowledge of applicable battery safety standards and regulations, such as UN 38.3, UL, IEC, GB, and FMVSS requirements.

• Experience working directly with automotive or electric-vehicle OEM customers.

• Experience developing DFMEAs and PFMEAs and supporting APQP, PPAP, product qualification, change management, and customer audits.

• Hands-on laboratory experience with electrochemical characterization techniques such as GITT, EIS, CV, and PITT.

• Hands-on experience with material-characterization methods such as XRD, FTIR, Raman spectroscopy, SEM, or NMR.

• Experience analyzing large battery datasets using Python, MATLAB, or comparable data-analysis tools.