Staff Compliance Engineer (Battery Certification)
Compliance / Regulatory
San Francisco, CA, USA
About Us
Anode is accelerating the shift from fossil fuel extraction and combustion toward lightweight capture and consumption from renewable sources. We’re building scalable, silent, flexible, and efficient mobile energy infrastructure for the zero-emission future. Our mobile battery energy storage systems (mBESS) represent a new category of clean, deployable power.
Position Overview
Anode is seeking a Staff Test Engineer to lead the Design Verification Plan & Report (DVP&R) efforts for our mBESS platform and own our path to UL certification. This senior individual contributor role defines how we verify our products meet engineering, regulatory, and reliability requirements—from environmental and mechanical stress testing through accelerated lifecycle validation to third-party certification. You’ll partner closely with mechanical engineering, manage Anode’s external test lab program, and serve as our primary interface for UL and other certification bodies, complementing our Integration & Test Engineer, who leads system bring-up and firmware-facing feature development testing & validation.
Key Responsibilities
- DVP&R Ownership: Lead the development and execution of the DVP&R for the mBESS platform. Translate engineering and product requirements into a structured verification plan, drive test execution across internal and external venues, and own reporting that closes the loop with engineering.
- UL Certification Leadership: Serve as the primary stakeholder for UL certification testing (UL 9540, UL 9540A, UL 1973, and related standards). Manage the test plan, sample readiness, lab engagement, and findings remediation through to listing.
- Environmental & Mechanical Testing: Plan and oversee shock, vibration, ingress protection (IP), thermal chamber, thermal shock, humidity, salt fog, and altitude testing. Define test profiles aligned with deployment use cases and applicable standards (IEC 60068, IEC 60529, ISO 16750, MIL-STD-810).
- Accelerated Life & Reliability Testing: Design and lead accelerated lifecycle, HALT/HASS, and reliability growth campaigns. Develop reliability models, set targets with engineering and product, and drive root cause analysis on test-uncovered failures.
- External Test Program Management: Own relationships with external test labs and certification bodies. Scope SOWs, manage schedules and budgets, coordinate sample logistics, and ensure test reports meet Anode’s standards for traceability and defensibility.
- Production Validation Bridge: Stand up and execute low-volume production validation activities ahead of Anode’s introduction of a dedicated manufacturing test capability. Define first-article inspection, lot acceptance criteria, and outgoing quality checks that hand off cleanly when the production test function comes online.
- Cross-Functional Partnership: Partner closely with mechanical engineering on enclosure, structural, and thermal design verification. Coordinate with systems, electrical, and firmware teams to ensure full-system test coverage and clean handoffs between subsystem and system-level testing.
- Compliance Strategy: Maintain visibility into the regulatory landscape for mobile and stationary energy storage (UL, IEC, NFPA, FCC, CE, NRTL listings) and inform product and engineering decisions early to keep certification timelines and costs predictable.
- Test Infrastructure Strategy: Decide what reliability and environmental capability we build in-house versus contract externally. Specify equipment, fixtures, and instrumentation needed to scale verification as the product matures.
- Verification Data & Reporting: Establish standards for test data capture, analysis, and reporting. Produce clear, defensible verification reports that support internal design decisions and external regulatory submissions.
Qualifications
Must Have:
- Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical, Electrical, or Systems Engineering (or related discipline)
- 10+ years of experience in product verification and reliability testing of complex electromechanical systems
- Demonstrated ownership of DVP&R or equivalent verification programs from plan through closeout
- Direct experience guiding products through NRTL certification (UL, ETL, CSA, or equivalent)
- Hands-on experience specifying and overseeing environmental testing: shock, vibration, IP, thermal cycling, humidity
- Experience scoping and managing work with external test labs
- Excellent technical writing skills for verification plans, reports, and regulatory submissions
Preferred:
- Experience certifying battery energy storage, EV, or other high-voltage products
- Direct UL 9540, UL 9540A, UL 1973, IEC 62619, or NFPA 855 experience
- Strong working knowledge of reliability methods (accelerated life testing, HALT/HASS, Weibull analysis, MTBF/MTTF modeling)
- Experience with EMI/EMC testing and CE/FCC marking processes
- Working knowledge of functional safety frameworks (ISO 26262, IEC 61508) as they apply to verification
- Experience in an early-stage hardware company where verification standards must be built, not inherited
Why This Role Matters
The decisions you make about how we verify our products will shape Anode’s product quality, certification timelines, and customer confidence for years to come. You’ll build the verification and reliability discipline that takes our mBESS platform from prototype through commercial deployment—and lay the foundation for the certification posture of every product that follows.