Senior Staff/Principal Battery Cell Engineer

This position may be filled at the Staff, Senior Staff, or Principal 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.