Senior Applications Engineer

Job Title

Senior Applications Engineer

Role Summary

Hands-on engineer who helps customers design-in vertical GaN power devices (100 V–2300 V) by building and testing power converter hardware, running simulations, characterizing fast-switching wide-bandgap devices, and delivering actionable recommendations. Works with the Principal Applications Engineer and Device Engineering to support customer evaluations, create reference hardware, and produce technical content.

Role is on-site in Somerville, MA and includes occasional customer and industry travel.

Experience Level

Senior - typically 2–5+ years of industry experience in applications engineering, power converter design, or semiconductor characterization. Ph.D. holders or recent graduates with strong hands-on power-converter experience are also considered.

Responsibilities

Provide technical support and ownership for customer design-in, evaluation hardware, simulation, and bench characterization to turn device performance into system-level wins.

• Support customer design-in: simulations, bench testing, troubleshooting and performance optimization.
• Translate customer specifications into device and circuit requirements and present findings to customers.
• Build and run SPICE and/or PLECS simulations; correlate simulation with bench measurements and maintain reusable models/templates.
• Contribute to evaluation/demo/reference designs: schematic/layout, BOM, bring-up, test plans and characterization reports.
• Perform system-level bench testing and debug; propose design optimizations based on measured performance.
• Characterize fast-switching wide-bandgap devices at the system level, including switching waveforms, thermal and parasitic-sensitive measurements, and robustness testing.
• Develop practical design rules for customers: gate drive, layout/loop inductance, protection and measurement techniques.
• Author application notes, design guides, test reports and training material.
• Document customer requirements, test results and failure-mode learnings; provide feedback to Device Engineering and Product teams.

Requirements

Technical must-have skills and practical lab experience required to perform the responsibilities above. Education credentials are summarized separately below.

Must-have:

• Strong understanding of power converter design: switching losses, thermal behavior, magnetics, layout/parasitics and gate-drive tradeoffs.
• Hands-on bench experience building and testing power electronics hardware.
• Working proficiency with SPICE and/or PLECS for power-circuit simulation.
• Working proficiency with PCB EDA tools (Altium Designer, Eagle, OrCAD, or similar).
• Clear written and verbal technical communication; comfortable engaging with customers directly.

Nice-to-have:

• Lab experience with high-voltage or high-current wide-bandgap devices (GaN or SiC).
• Experience with parasitic-aware layout, EMI mitigation for fast-switching stages, and measurement techniques for parasitic-sensitive signals.
• Prior industry experience in applications engineering, converter design, or power-semiconductor characterization (preferred 2–5 years beyond degree).

Education Requirements

Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering (Power Electronics) preferred; M.S. in Electrical Engineering with substantial hands-on power converter work (thesis, lab or industry project) is acceptable. Fields of study: Electrical Engineering / Power Electronics or closely related technical fields. Recent Ph.D. graduates are explicitly welcome.

About the Company

Company: Vertical Semiconductor

Headquarters: Somerville, MA, USA

Venture-backed MIT spin-out developing vertical gallium nitride (GaN) power semiconductors and system-level solutions for high-performance power conversion, targeting next-generation compute and AI applications.