The role
The Principal Solar Module Engineer is a leader in Research and Development, responsible for delivering solar module technologies that enable successful products through customer engagement, technology development and advanced engineering. You deliver module technologies that can make a profit against their cost of goods sold, the non-recurring engineering to develop them, and the capital equipment necessary to deliver them — then hand hardware to internal engineering and product customers within SOURCE production capabilities. The role runs in close partnership with technology development, product development, engineering, operations and production, and you own those interfaces for constant communication, disciplined execution and continuous improvement.
What you will do
- Create and maintain a roadmap of technologies that give module products a market advantage, backed by deep knowledge of available photovoltaic technologies.
- Identify and screen technologies against viable business cases to justify investment.
- Develop and engineer new technologies into designs that can be delivered to the market, and evaluate products against market traction to feed the next cycle.
- Drive module development scope, schedule and budget from early concept through hardware-driven architectures that enable detailed engineering within products.
- Set module requirements, specifications and performance targets.
- Work closely with engineering, manufacturing and sales to deliver on time and on budget, meeting quality and reliability standards for space applications.
- Investigate alternative adhesives and materials to bring costs down without hurting reliability.
What you bring
- Deep photovoltaic and solar module expertise, with a track record taking module technology from concept to delivered hardware.
- Fluency in the commercial side: cost of goods sold, NRE, capital equipment and the business case behind a technology investment.
- Experience setting requirements, specifications and performance targets for space-qualified hardware.
- Proven partnership across engineering, operations, production and sales — you own the interface rather than wait on it.
- Judgement about which cost reductions are safe and which touch reliability.
SOURCE is an equal opportunity employer. This role supports programs subject to US export control; candidates must be eligible to access controlled technical data.
