Protean Electric is an automotive technology firm with around 100 talented people globally. Our purpose is to make electric vehicles better, for the people who use them and for a sustainable world.
We believe that freedom of ideas, integrity of response, desire to improve, and collaborative thinking drive innovation. Joining Protean means working with talented experts across the organisation who value your ideas, empower you to make a difference, and encourage you to challenge yourself and others.
Motor Control Research Engineer, Farnham, UK
The Role
Working in the Advanced Engineering Team to innovate, design, test and analyse with the goal of ensuring that Protean’s products are the best on the market over the long term.
This role will be offered at the Engineer, Senior Engineer or Principal Engineer level depending on experience.
Main Duties & Responsibilities
Include, although are not limited to, the following:
· Improving Protean Motor Control Software:
o Identify areas for potential improvement of Protean products via software enhancement by:
* Performing physical or simulation experiments with existing products
* Being aware of state of the art in electric machine field and the potential benefit of new technologies.
o Motivate and plan projects to deliver these improvements by:
* Using simulations to show magnitude of benefit of proposal
* Creating proposals to allow prioritisation of this activity over others.
* Create a long-term strategy for development of these improvements
o Deliver projects by:
* Collaborating with engineers in other disciplines
* Creating or using simulations at appropriate fidelity levels to prototype algorithms
* Transferring algorithms to motor prototype software and demonstrate benefit in actual motors.
* Analyse results and produce reports showing achieved benefit.
· Supporting other engineering functions with tools to enable decisions involving trades across multiple disciplines.
o Understand customer requirements (internal and external)
o Develop Protean motor and inverter simulation, analysis and optimisation tools.
o Provide these tools with multiple levels of fidelity to suit use case.
o Support engineers both within and outside of Protean to make best use of tools.
· Interfacing with external research establishments and consultants
· Actively participating in international conferences and meetings
If appointed at the more senior levels you will be required to:
· Develop long-term control strategies and goals for the organisation
· Propose and lead larger, cross functional projects.
· Report at all relevant stages to key stakeholders, externally and internally.
· Mentor other team members.
· Establish and track performance metrics to measure the success of initiatives.
Reporting, Location & Travel
This role reports to the Team Lead and is based at Protean’s Farnham offices.
The role may have occasional requirement for national and international travel to China & Europe
Relevant Skills & Behaviours
We measure ourselves against our values:
· Will to Win: we succeed by delivering to customers; on time, on quality and on cost
· Pioneering: we are passionate about the technology
· Courageous: we face our challenges
· Working Together: we can rely on each other and others can rely on us
· Personally Responsible: we do what needs doing, when it needs doing
· With Integrity: we are honest, open and respectful
Successful candidates should be able to demonstrate the following relevant skills and behaviours:
· Research and development
· Analysis of experimental data
· Technical Leadership
· Accuracy and attention to detail
· Presentation skills
· Excellent communication and team working skills
· Matlab
· Simulink
· Excellent communication and relationship building skills
· Strong integrity & confidentiality
Relevant Knowledge & Experience
Essential and/or desirable relevant knowledge and experience:
Essential:
· Educated to PhD level in relevant discipline or significant experience in research environment.
· Multiphase permanent magnet synchronous electric machine characteristics and control methodologies
· Electric machine simulation in matlab/simulink/simscape
Highly desirable:
· Understanding of modern inverter architectures and the benefits of each approach.
· Simulation of inverter characteristics at various levels of fidelity
· Simulation and compensation for non-linear elements in real electric machines and inverters.
· Integration of electric machine simulations into larger systems
· Modern optimisation techniques applied to complex systems
· Experience of practical implementation of motor control algorithms
Desirable:
· Frequency domain analysis skills
· Python programming skills
· Cloud based processing and optimisation
· Machine learning/AI in engineering design