Power Your Career at Curtis

Do you like to provide technical support to customers? Do you like to travel to customer sites and be the point of contact between the customer and the engineering design team? We are looking for someone to develop technical documenation for both pre and post-sales technical support.

At Curtis Instruments, we’re looking for a highly technical, best-in-class Control Systems Engineer.

Specific Requirements:

1. Bachelor’s or advanced degree in Electronics, Electric Engineering or Automatization.
2. At least 5 years of experience in circuit design.
3. Proficient in design of analog and digital circuit as well as design of SCM embedded systems.
4. Familiar with electric motor and driving.
5. Capable of working independently, good communication skills, team player.
6. Good command of English language.

Job Responsibilities:

1. Hardware development for control systems for electric vehicles and control/display panels for industrial vehicles.
2. Interfacing and collaborating with software design, verification & validation engineering and testing engineering to ensure that the final design of a product completely meets the pre-defined requirement.
3. Sustainment and upgrade of existing products.
4. Verification and validation of components, method of testing and result analysis to determine.

Leading the way in vehicle motor controls, Curtis Instruments is looking for someone to Lead our Mechanical Engineering Group in the design, prototype, test, troubleshooting and repair of complex components and assemblies. This includes defining methods, operations and sequences for qualification testing of components, assemblies and products, establishing and documenting engineering procedures.

What you will do:

• Manage and Mentor Mechanical Engineers.
• Oversee the workload of the Mechanical Engineering function by coordinating with various groups and project leaders.
• Participate in mechanical reviews.
• Ensure appropriate review of engineering designs during product development.
• Develop detailed manufacturing packages (including BOM, detailed engineering drawings, 2D drawings, and production assembly drawings) for effective design transfer to manufacturing.
• Develop tests for mechanical hardware and ensure proper operation over the range of use.
• Design new mechanical hardware, test & production fixtures to meet functional specifications and customer requests.
• Support current fixtures for products in production.
• Analyze tolerance stack up, work with vendors to ensure specifications are met, perform stress analysis, build prototypes or mockups, write instructions for machinists.
• Fully document all design work, including appropriate tolerance studies and margin analyses.
• Ensure designs are optimized for reliability, manufacturability, testability and cost.
• Specify new mechanical components.
• Ensure employee performance evaluations of direct reports are completed and communicated on a timely basis.

What you should have:

• BS degree or equivalent and 10 years mechanical engineering experience with 3 years supervisory.
• Thorough understanding of materials, fabrication, and manufacturing processes, as well as industry standards for design and testing.
• Demonstrated ability to successfully develop designs in electro/mechanical packaging to meet project costs, performance, and schedules.
• Proficient with SolidWorks 2D & 3D CAD, creating solid models of individual mechanical components and assemblies, as well as fabrication documents utilizing ANSI Y14.5 geometric toleranceing.
• Broad knowledge in injection molding, compression molding, machining, aluminum die casting, stamping, aluminum extrusions, rapid prototyping, and plating processes.
• Demonstrated understanding and success in new product introduction environments inclusive of DFM.
• Knowledge of ESD principles and practices.
• PC literate with experience in MS Office.
• Excellent verbal and written communication and interpersonal skills..
• Accuracy and good organizational skills.
• Demonstrated success managing and mentoring Mechanical Engineers

We're looking for an expert in PCB Design to work as a Senior Designer, both in conventional SMD and thick copper boards for power conversion. We use a lot of insulated metal substrate boards.

We are moving from PADS-heavy design to Altium, so if you bring both Altium and PADS experience, with a love of libraries, you'll be a super-hero here!

Most of your work will be collaborating with the electrical design and mechanical engineers, as you make new company products together.

What you will do:

• Independently design dense double-sided or four-layer printed circuit assemblies.
• Create and maintain libraries in Altium.
• Incorporate Engineering Change Orders.
• Thorough application of mixed technologies PCB, surface-mount and through-hole.
• Prepare fabrication and assembly drawings.
• Perform design verification of own work as well as peer group.
• Provide necessary documentation for bill of materials.
• Check for documentation accuracy.
• Maintain records and documentation using laboratory notebooks and company computer networks.

What you should have:

• BS in Industrial Arts or AA along with technical or on the job training equivalent.
• Seven plus years experience in relevant technical environment.
• Four plus years of experience Altium- library, layout, schematics, revcontrol
• Experience with PADS preferred
• SolidWorks knowledge would be a plus, but not preferred
• Thorough understanding of PCB fabrication processes, tolerances, IPC standards.
• Knowledge of ESD principles and practices.
• PC literate with experience in MS Office (Access, Excel and Word).
• Effective verbal and written communication skills, as well as excellent interpersonal skills
• Accuracy and good organizational skills

Curtis design engineers develop the next generation of motor controllers that lead the industry for material handling and golf carts. Our existing controller offerings have battery voltages ranging from 24V to 144V, and load currents from 50A to 1000A. Next we are exploring to increase the battery voltage levels up to 400V, which is why our team is growing.

For this position we are specifically looking for an engineer that has the relevant experience to design the 400V power converter. Mainly focusing on the power switches (likely using 600V IGBT modules), filter capacitors, liquid cooling, gate drives, etc.

As a member of the electrical design team you will own the circuit design of a new product. You will work closely with the project lead and the control, software and mechanical engineers from design kick-off until product release. If you get excited about researching and developing new things, aren’t daunted by solving design challenges and enjoy directly impacting current and future products daily, then our team might be your next career step.

What you’ll do:

• Design and document the circuits needed to meet the specifications of a new motor controller product, reusing existing designs as much as possible. Apply current techniques and tools to improve cost, design time, reliability and manufacturability.
• Use analysis, simulations and/or measurements to demonstrate how the requirements are met.
• Own the schematic capture and BOM. Guide the PCB designers.
• Author the HW verification test plan to cover all requirements.
• Work with the verification engineers/technicians to ensure the design meets the specifications for each stage of development.
• Spend up to 20% of your time researching new technologies.

You should have:

• BSEE or equivalent with five plus years of applicable design experience in a relevant technical discipline.
• Demonstrated ability to develop designs to meet project specifications, costs and schedules.
• Schematic capture and circuit simulation tool experience.
• Ability to execute own work with minimal supervision.
• Effective verbal and written communication skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• MSEE or Ph.D. and ten plus years of design experience in power electronics or related discipline.
• 200V-600V design experience.
• Please do not apply if you have no industry experience. Research experience is great, but does not take the place of industry experience. Thank you.

Are you looking for a position with a proven Electric Vehicle leader? How about a position leading key design projects of Electric Motor Controls? Do you have experience designing electronics or embedded software? If so, we are looking for you!

This position, which is located in our Livermore, CA office, is a needed addition to our engineering design team. In this leadership role you will plan, schedule, and execute all phases of product development from design through project release.

We are looking for someone who:

• Is experienced in project management of electronics
• Is experienced designing circuitry and/or embedded software
  
• Has a strong understanding of digital and analog circuitry and good general engineering practices.
• Has experience writing and reviewing product proposals, functional specifications and system architecture.
  
• Has proven ability to work with design engineers and resolve technical issues.
• Has experience working in a manufacturing environment, and enjoys it as well.

Education, Skills & Experience

• We'd prefer a B.S. degree in an Electrical/Electronic Engineering discipline
• 2+ years experience leading projects
• Experience with power electronics or embedded systems is GREAT! In fact, those words get us down-right excited, but you better be able to speak to them!
• Demonstrated knowledge of industrial product design.
• Experience applying current techniques and tools to improve costs, design times, reliability, durability and manufacturability.
• Knowledge of good engineering practices, including design of experiments.
• Effective verbal and written communication skills as well as excellent interpersonal skills.

Please do not apply if you are a new grad with no work experience yet. Congratulations on your degree! But for this position, we are looking for someone with experience leading projects and at least a 2 year technical background.

As Curtis Instruments expands into new design and new areas of development, including on-road, we are looking for someone to help the teams through regulatory and safety challenges.

You're an ideal candidate if you see yourself as someone who adds value and are specifically excited about getting involved interpreting regulatory standards to design processes, working on DFMEAs, MTTFd calculations, and more!

Please reach out with an application if you are educated in Electrical Engineering and have experience in compliance, regulatory, and/or safety engineering.

• Own the regulatory and high-level safety engineering requirements
• Compliance engineering including reviewing internal project goals, determination of applicable compliance standards, interpretation of standards, communication of requirements to appropriate development teams, and follow up with internal and external resources to ensure requirements are met before prototype or production.
• Perform Hardware metric calculations and write related safety reports
• Build overall awareness of compliance requirements by assisting with team briefings, process development, manufacturing site audits, and safety standards education throughout the organization.
• Interpret regulatory standards to drive design process improvements
• Participate in development team meetings to assess compliance requirements and create/communicate a plan for compliance. Create alignment of the development direction with applicable regulatory requirements and compliance processes.
• Negotiate and prepare cost and time estimates for compliance evaluation and testing from appropriate agencies including internal resources.
• Provide direction to testers.
• Conduct safety chain analysis within the DFMEA process
• Participate in design reviews and provide direction to product development teams on product regulatory compliance issues
• Ensure proper archiving of product regulatory compliance reports.
• Contribute to standards working committees
• Prepare documentation to support regulatory submissions
• Respond to global regulatory questions

What you should have:

• Electrical engineering degree with minimum 5 years proven relevant electrical safety standards experience.
• Experience with IEC 60529, IEC 61508, ISO 26262, ISO 13849, EN 1175, EN 280, UL 538, UL 1998
• Significant knowledge in the determination of appropriate standards, understanding of those standards and their application to real-world design processes.
• Familiarity with MTTFd Calculations, Safety-related Hardware Metrics
• DFMEA process experience
• Ability to consistently achieve a high standard of quality and accuracy with extreme attention to detail.
• Apply logical thinking to daily responsibilities
• Ability to manage multiple projects and deadlines

We are looking for someone to help maintain and design Curtis Instruments' proprietary Vehicle Control Language and applications studio for electric motor vehicles.

What you will do:

• Design, code and debug Windows based tools to support new product development and sustaining projects, with a focus on database back-end, user interface design, and communication protocols for embedded systems.
  
• Design, modify, extend and support a compiler and run-time interpreter for Curtis Vehicle Control Language, creating new applications and functionality.
  
• Design, set up and run tests to ensure the design meets specifications.
  
• Apply novel techniques and tools to improve design time, reliability and functionality.
  
• Work within a small design team to complete assigned objectives.
  
• Participate in software design, electrical schematic and project reviews.
  
• Participate in the preparation of development specifications.

What you should have:

• BSEE, BSCE or BSCS degree plus 0-5 years experience in a relevant technical discipline
  
• Compiler Experience
• Experience in programming C, C++, and C# .NET and installation/deployment procedures. (especially C#)
  
• Experience with serial communication over RS232 and CAN are a plus.
  
• Demonstrated ability to develop designs to meet project schedules and requirements.
  
• Demonstrated knowledge of microprocessor circuits and implementation.
  
• Demonstrated knowledge of software analysis, documentation and design of experiments.
  
• Knowledge of good engineering practices.
  
• Excellent interpersonal skills
  
• Effective verbal and written communication skills.

At Curtis Instruments, we’re looking for an additional Systems Engineer to own the technical architecture of EV systems. The need is driven by company expansion and additional product development projects. This role entails gathering requirements, creating design specifications, reviewing design, and participation in the verification process. The ideal person will in with a love of managing many stakeholders as they pay close attention to market needs, safety regulations, system behavior, and development lifecycle.

On the job, you will:

• Develop system and subsystem requirements for determining desired behaviors, features or functions of an embedded controller
• Analyze and negotiate requirements with internal and external stakeholders, tracing their implementation throughout product development and integration
• Guide the development of and traceability of verification and validation testing
• Conduct concept and design reviews.
• Guide design engineers and group leads in implementing specified features. Work with them to modify these features as issues or new solutions are found.
• Support system FMEA process & develop DFMEA for recording potential failure modes and planed corrective actions.
• Lead problem resolution, tracking, and provide feedback on status to tracked problems
• Apply solid technical understanding, critical reasoning and a structured approach to solving problems in both familiar and unfamiliar domains.
• Provide leadership and cross-functional teamwork, providing assistance in the development of consensus and win-win situations.

Qualities you bring to the table should include:

• An understanding of software and the software development lifecycle.
• Knowledge of and interest in electrical circuits, software algorithms, and control theory.
• Understanding of mechanical design.
• Experience designing complex system requirements, ideally as it relates to motor/vehicle control, automotive applications, timing techniques, control algorithm design, simulation.
• Awareness of good engineering practice and methodologies.
• The ability to turn written communication and designs into quality group presentations.
• Project & Time Management: Manage multiple priorities while maintaining a commitment to the tasks at hand.
• Problem Solving: Able to identify problems, analyze varying courses of action to determine, recommend and negotiate optimal solutions and execute contingency plans
• Complex Analysis/Synthesis: Able to process a large amount of information flow, identify multiple parameters, interdependencies and inconsistencies to provide both high level systems overview and deep subject matter expertise in electrical, software and mechanical sub-systems.

Bonus points for:

• Ability to understand C, or C++
• Experience with transportation engineering, road safety, Systems
• Experience working in a regulated or safety critical environment
• Skilled in cross-functional team communication, scrum and agile techniques
• Familiar with development process workflows with ALM tools