Principal Electrical Engineer

Job description

VVater is America’s Next Water Company, delivering the future of purification through its award-winning Farady Reactor (CES Best of Innovation 2025, World Future Award 2025, Time Best Invention Award 2025), proprietary ALTEP (Advanced Low Tension Electroporation Process), Advanced Dissolved Air Flotation, and Micro & Nano Bubble technologies. Unlike outdated chemical, filter, and membrane systems, VVater’s electric-field breakthroughs eliminate PFAS, microplastics, microorganisms, and other contaminants with record retention times, without toxic byproducts or costly consumables. With over 4.3B gallons treated and validation from global leaders, VVater is scaling into municipal drinking water and wastewater, DPR/IPR, onsite reuse for data centers, commercial buildings, and resorts, residential purification, and consumer health water, delivering a 60% smaller footprint, 40% CapEx savings, 80% OpEx savings, and 40% less energy use. Job Description: THIS IS AN ONSITE POSITION BASED IN AUSTIN, TEXAS - NO REMOTE OR HYBRID AVAILABILITY FOR THIS POSITION The Principal Electrical Engineer owns the power-conversion and delivery hardware. You take a power equipment specification and carry it to a validated, manufacturable product: Core-type/shell-type electrical apparatus, rectifiers, converters, panel integration, protection, and electrical compliance You will design the hardware that feeds high-current electrochemical reactors, define protection and power quality, and run the electrical FAT that proves it. You work in close partnership with the electrochemical principal, who defines the electrical duty the reactors require, and with the mechanical, controls, and manufacturing teams. VVater moves at a fast pace to accelerate the development and adoption of cutting-edge technologies in the water industry. The right person will be energized by that pace rather than depleted by it. Key Responsibilities: Design power & voltage conversion hardware that meets the electrical duty requirements of VVater's reactors, in close collaboration with the chemical principal. Design and specify the requirements for voltage conversion and distribution devices for high-current and, where required, pulsed or pulse-reverse duty. Relate electrical operating parameters to reactor performance, efficiency, and energy use, and translate reactor electrical duty into robust supply specifications. Design for efficiency across the real operating range, not just at the nameplate point. Own panel integration, protection coordination, grounding and bonding, and power quality. Define and verify electrical safety and code compliance for packaged modules. Mitigate thermal, EMI, and harmonic effects at the component, panel, and system level. Partner with the Mechanical and Controls teams on PLC integration and on safe-state electrical behavior. Build and run electrical FAT: efficiency, thermal, harmonics, and fault-condition testing. Establish performance, durability, and reliability specifications for all electrical power hardware. Diagnose failures to root cause and feed every finding back into the design. Develop and document standard operating procedures (SOPs), design protocols, and safety guidelines for installing, operating, and maintaining electrical systems. Calculations, simulations, and analyses (e.g., thermal, electromagnetic) are performed to optimize system performance and reliability. Drive design-for-manufacture on power components and assemblies. Qualify suppliers and manage the supply chain for voltage-conversion and distribution devices, semiconductors, magnetics, and critical electrical power components. Partner with manufacturing on assembly protocols, quality control, and cost reduction initiatives. Support commissioning and field electrical troubleshooting, feeding failures back into design. Set electrical design standards and build reusable templates to help the team move faster. Mentor junior engineers, raise the electrical-engineering bar across the team, and generate intellectual property. Represent VVater technically with customers, partners, and suppliers. Qualifications : BS or MS in Electrical Engineering, and 7+ years of power electronics or power-supply design. Hands-on record designing voltage conversion devices, rectifiers, and converters, and carrying them to validated, manufacturable products. Panel integration experience with protection, grounding, power quality, and electrical safety and compliance. Hardware bring-up and FAT experience: efficiency, thermal, harmonics, and fault-condition testing. DFM and supplier-management experience on power components. Experience with CAD software (e.g., AutoCAD Electrical, EPLAN, SolidWorks, Fusion 360) and simulation tools (e.g., COMSOL, ANSYS) for system modeling and design optimization. Thermal and EMI/harmonics mitigation at component, panel, and system level. Exceptional written and verbal communication; you can specify, review, and defend a power-hardware design to engineers, customers, and auditors. Comfort with ambiguity and the judgment to decide what to design and test next without waiting for direction. Preferred Experience : High-current DC & Low-Voltage AC or pulsed-power experience. UL, NSF, and field electrical-code familiarity, including NSF/ANSI 61 materials context where it touches wetted or packaged hardware. Industrial water or process-plant deployments. PLC and drive integration literacy. Electrochemical or electrolyzer power-supply experience, and working knowledge of how waveform shapes electrode behavior. Simulation tools for thermal and electromagnetic analysis (e.g., ANSYS or equivalent) and CAD for electrical design (e.g., AutoCAD Electrical, EPLAN). Reliability engineering and accelerated-life testing of power-related hardware. Knowledge of controls, instrumentation, automation, and SCADA or PLC systems will be a big plus. ** As a part of our process to ensure a comprehensive evaluation of all applicants, assessment tests are required as part of our recruitment process. Unfortunately, should you elect not to participate in completing the assessment tests, your application will not be able to progress to the next stage or be considered during evaluation.