eVTOL Battery Systems Engineer
The job description
Tech stack. lithium-ion cells, battery pack design, battery management systems, thermal runaway containment, DO-311A, cell characterization, state of charge estimation, high-voltage safety practice
About the role
You will join an eVTOL aircraft company to own the battery system, the energy reservoir the entire aircraft depends on and the subsystem under the heaviest certification scrutiny. This team selects cells, designs packs, and builds the battery management system that must prove it can contain a thermal runaway without endangering the aircraft. Your work sets the range, the dispatch reliability, and the safety case for the energy system, and regulators will examine every claim you make. You will work at the intersection of electrochemistry, thermal engineering, and certification, and your test programs will generate the data the entire safety case rests on.
What you will achieve
- Design a certifiable battery pack architecture that meets energy, power, and weight targets while containing a single-cell thermal runaway with zero propagation to neighboring cells.
- Develop and validate BMS algorithms for state of charge and state of health estimation accurate enough to drive dispatch and reserve-energy decisions.
- Run cell selection and characterization campaigns, down-selecting to a production cell backed by data the certification team can defend to the authorities.
- Drive pack-level abuse and environmental testing to DO-311A, closing findings through analysis and targeted design changes rather than redesign spirals.
- Cut pack development cycle time by building modular test articles that de-risk electrical, thermal, and mechanical integration in parallel tracks. Each discipline tests against representative hardware months before the integrated pack exists, compressing the program critical path.
What you will bring
Must-haves
- 2 to 5 years in battery pack design, BMS development, or cell engineering in aerospace, automotive, or energy storage with production or flight intent.
- Deep knowledge of lithium-ion cell behavior, including aging mechanisms, abuse response, and thermal characteristics across operating conditions.
- Experience with BMS hardware and firmware concepts, contactor sequencing, and isolation monitoring for high-voltage packs.
- Understanding of thermal runaway propagation mechanisms and containment design practice for multi-cell packs.
- Familiarity with DO-311A or equivalent rechargeable battery safety standards and their test requirements.
- Disciplined high-voltage safety practice, from PPE selection to test lab lockout procedures.
Nice-to-haves
- Experience evaluating solid-state or other next-generation cell chemistries for aviation use.
- Background in battery modeling, from equivalent circuits to electrochemical models.
- Prior work on a battery system that went through FAA or EASA certification.
- Knowledge of battery maintenance and continued airworthiness considerations.
Joby Aviation
Archer Aviation
BETA Technologies
Lilium
Wisk Aero
Vertical Aerospace