Sr Principal Electrical Engineer - San Jose, United States
Originally posted 9 September 2026 by the employer — open 1 day.
This role focuses on developing test vehicles for high-current BCD and LV GaN power process technologies.
About the role
This role leads the development of test vehicles supporting high-current BCD and low-voltage GaN power process and product portfolios, owning test vehicle definition, circuit and layout design, and characterization planning.
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.
- Design and simulate power stage circuits such as synchronous buck/boost, multiphase, half-bridge/DrMOS, and gate drivers.
- Select and characterize power devices like LDMOS, trench MOSFETs, LV GaN HEMTs, and Schottky/sync rectifiers.
- Perform IC-level layout and design for test structures, including parasitic-aware layout for switch nodes, current sensing, and gate drive paths.
- Extend designs to module/package level, including co-design of power stages with packaging, magnetics, and PCB layout for evaluation boards.
- Develop test and characterization plans covering DC parametrics, switching performance, efficiency, transient response, and voltage/current stress margins.
What you'll need
- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Electrical Engineering, Microelectronics, or 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 (e.g., buck, boost, multiphase/interleaved converters, half-bridge, 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.
- Proficiency with circuit simulation tools (SPICE or equivalent) and familiarity with device/TCAD simulation concepts.
- Strong lab skills: bring-up, debug, and characterization using oscilloscopes, curve tracers, power analyzers, and thermal imaging.
Skills: BCD process, LV GaN, power stage circuits, buck/boost, gate drivers, power device physics
This role has been open 0 days — well below the 49-day median for Power Electronics roles.
Power Electronics · Power Conversion
|
Open roles in category
47
|
Median days open
49 d
|
Median salary
$185k
|
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 (47 roles · 22 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 4 | 47 |
| Open roles in the wider Analog & Mixed-Signal family | 80 | 1320 · 101 employers |
| Median days open | 20 d | 49 d (−29 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $185k |
Skills observed across this category: BCD process, LV GaN, power stage circuits, buck/boost, gate drivers, power device physics
Who's hiring in this category
- Infineon Technologies · 7 open roles · median 22 d
- Renesas Electronics (this employer) · 4 open roles · median 20 d
- Analog Devices · 3 open roles · median 48 d
- Graphcore · 3 open roles · median 21 d
- onsemi · 3 open roles · median 114 d
- Power Integrations · 3 open roles · median 72 d
How we counted: 47 open Power Electronics (Power Conversion) roles from 22 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 10 Sept 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.