Senior Principal Engineer - San Jose, United States
Originally posted 28 October 2026 by the employer.
Lead test vehicle definition and circuit design for high-current BCD and low-voltage GaN power process portfolios.
About the role
This role leads the development of test vehicles supporting high-current BCD (Bipolar-CMOS-DMOS) and low-voltage GaN power process and product portfolios, owning test vehicle definition, circuit and layout design, and characterization planning from concept through silicon bring-up.
What you'll do
- Define, design, and drive execution of test vehicles for high-current BCD and LV GaN process technologies, including device test structures, scaled power stages, and full-function demonstration circuits. - Translate process capability targets and product roadmap requirements into test vehicle architecture and specifications. - Design and simulate power stage circuits such as synchronous buck/boost, multiphase, half-bridge/DrMOS, and gate drivers under realistic switching and thermal conditions. - Select and characterize power devices, including LDMOS, trench MOSFETs, LV GaN HEMTs, and Schottky/sync rectifiers, optimizing layout-dependent tradeoffs such as RDS(ON), Qg, breakdown voltage, and SOA. - Perform IC-level layout and design for test structures, incorporating parasitic-aware layout for switch nodes, current sensing, and gate drive paths. - Co-design power stages with packaging, magnetics, and PCB layout for evaluation boards and module/package-level test vehicles. - Develop test and characterization plans, lead silicon bring-up, and correlate measured lab results against simulation and design targets.
What you'll need
- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Electrical Engineering, Microelectronics, or a related field. - 10+ years of hands-on design experience in power semiconductor devices, analog/power ICs, or power electronics. - Strong working knowledge of power conversion topologies, including buck, boost, multiphase/interleaved converters, half-bridge, and DrMOS/Intelli-Phase-style architectures. - Solid understanding of power device physics and tradeoffs across BCD process technologies and GaN, particularly low-voltage GaN HEMTs. - Demonstrated experience designing test structures or test chips/vehicles for process technology development. - IC-level design and layout experience, including parasitic-sensitive layout practices for high-current switching nodes. - Experience taking designs beyond the die level to module, package, or board level, such as power module co-design and evaluation board layout. - Proficiency with circuit simulation tools (SPICE or equivalent) and familiarity with device/TCAD simulation concepts. - Proven lab skills in bring-up, debug, and characterization using oscilloscopes, curve tracers, power analyzers, and thermal imaging.
Skills: GaN HEMT, BCD, buck/boost, DrMOS, test vehicles, SPICE
This role has been open 0 days — well below the 48-day median for Power Electronics roles.
Power Electronics · Power Conversion
|
Open roles in category
55
|
Median days open
48 d
|
Median salary
$157k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | Renesas Electronics | All employers we track in this specialty (55 roles · 23 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 6 | 55 |
| Open roles in the wider Analog & Mixed-Signal family | 90 | 1551 · 108 employers |
| Median days open | 28 d | 48 d (−20 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $157k |
Skills observed across this category: GaN HEMT, BCD, buck/boost, DrMOS, test vehicles, SPICE
Who's hiring in this category
- Infineon Technologies · 14 open roles · median 24 d
- Renesas Electronics (this employer) · 6 open roles · median 28 d
- Power Integrations · 5 open roles · median 54 d
- onsemi · 4 open roles · median 109 d
- NVIDIA · 3 open roles · median 44 d
- Eridu AI · 2 open roles · median 51 d
How we counted: 55 open Power Electronics (Power Conversion) roles from 23 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 28 Oct 2026. Specialty figures count only roles carrying this exact specialty label, so an employer's related work in neighbouring specialties is not included there — it is counted in the wider Analog & Mixed-Signal family row. Figures refresh nightly.