Founding Electrical Engineer

Why This Role Exists

This is an opportunity to unify deep electrical engineering with chemical engineering and help revolutionize the way we produce the building blocks of our society: with the potential to affect billions of dollars of production, billions of tons of CO₂, and billions of people.

For over a century, the chemical industry has relied on a brutal, brute-force approach to manufacturing: using massive amounts of heat and pressure to force molecules to react. It is an energy-intensive process responsible for a massive footprint on our planet.  Rhoic is building a radically elegant alternative.

Chemistry is fundamentally just the rearrangement of electrons; we use precisely tuned electric fields to influence chemical reactions directly. Nature has used this exact blueprint for billions of years. Enzymes leverage local electric fields to drive highly selective chemistry flawlessly. Rhoic is the first to engineer this profound natural principle into a fully inorganic, scalable, industrial reactor platform.

Because the electric field drives the reactions, the electrical architecture isn't just a supporting component, it is core to our success. This role exists to build that system from first principles.

Where We Are

Rhoic was founded by builders with deep technical and commercial experience in advanced materials and cleantech. We are venture backed and supported by Activate at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and three separate DOE programs. We have additional support from mHUB, FedTech, and Cyclotron Road. Our advisory network includes world-class researchers in resonant power electronics and electrochemistry.We have a built out  lab space in Emeryville CA and instrument access at LBNL’s Molecular Foundry.

We have initial designs for and are building our pilot reactor using a closed-loop electrical/chemical signal during operation which produces chemicals more efficiently and selectively. You will own the electrical direction for the reactor. That means high-voltage power systems, field design, control electronics, and the physics of how the reactor works and scales.

We are pre-revenue. This is a ground-floor role that requires someone to be hands-on building. There is no team under you yet. You will work directly with our CEO (technical co-founder) and have real ownership over the electrical architecture from day one.

Who You Are

We are looking for an Electrical Engineer who is equally comfortable developing a new circuit architecture, embedded control software, printed circuit board layout, and debugging. This role will help develop electrical systems that combine mixed signal and mixed power design, embedded controls, power electronics, sensing, and real-time data acquisition.

The right person is hands-on, curious, rigorous, and motivated by the opportunity to tackle difficult engineering problems and be part of the development of truly novel technology.

HV safety procedures, interlocks, and operating limits are treated as engineering requirements at Rhoic.

What You’ll Do

• Own electrical designs from early concept through analysis, schematic capture, PCB layout, prototype build, bring-up, verification, and release.
• Design analog and mixed-signal circuits for sensing, signal conditioning, filtering, precision measurement, power conversion, protection, and communication interfaces.
• Develop embedded software and real-time controls for microcontrollers and DSPs, including ARM-core and TI C2000 platforms.
• Develop signal-processing, filtering, diagnostics, and control algorithms
• Design and debug power-electronics hardware, including DC-DC converters, switching circuits, protection features, and magnetics
• Own printed board layout including layer stackup, grounding and isolation, signal integrity, thermal performance, and component placement
• Debug complex hardware and software interactions using oscilloscopes, spectrum analyzers, logic analyzers, power supplies, electronic loads, thermal tools, and custom instrumentation.
• Use first-principles thinking to model system behavior, identify root causes, make sound tradeoffs, and drive practical solutions.
• Document design decisions, analyses, test results, requirements, interfaces, and release artifacts with clarity and discipline.

What We’re Looking For

• Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, computer engineering, or a related field; advanced degree or equivalent hands-on experience is a plus.
• Experience designing and delivering analog, mixed-signal, power-electronics, or embedded-control hardware.
• Strong understanding of analog design fundamentals, including op-amp circuits, ADC/DAC interfaces, voltage references, filtering, noise, grounding, shielding, EMC/EMI, and signal integrity.
• Experience with microcontrollers, DSPs, and embedded development in C/C++ for real-time applications.
• Familiarity with ARM-core devices and/or TI C2000 processors.
• Experience developing real-time controls, signal-processing algorithms, data-acquisition systems, or hardware diagnostics.
• Power electronics fundamentals, including switching converters, linear amplifiers, and thermal design for high voltage applications.
• Proficiency with schematic capture, circuit simulation, PCB design review, and hardware release workflows.
• Practical PCB layout knowledge, including stackups, return paths, component placement, creepage and clearance, manufacturability, and testability.
• Comfort in a hands-on R&D environment: soldering, rework, board bring-up, fixture development, rapid prototyping, and lab-based debugging.
• Ability to use lab equipment effectively and interpret real-world measurements critically.
• A rigorous, first-principles approach to solving ambiguous problems and developing new algorithms or architectures when existing approaches are insufficient.
• Clear technical communication and the ability to work effectively across disciplines.

Nice to Have

• Experience developing hardware for aerospace, automotive, robotics, industrial controls, or other safety- and reliability-critical products.
• Experience with high-voltage battery systems, electric propulsion, motor control, or aircraft electrical-power systems.
• FPGA development and tool chain experience
• Familiarity with, CAN, Ethernet, SPI, I²C, UART, or other embedded communications protocols.
• Experience with Python, MATLAB, Simulink, or similar tools for data analysis, test automation, modeling, and algorithm development.
• Familiarity with design-for-manufacturing, design-for-test, and production hardware release practices.

How You Work

You take ownership. You enjoy getting close to the hardware, understand that simulation and analysis must be validated by test, and can move between detail-oriented bench work and system-level engineering decisions. You communicate clearly, ask good questions, and work through hard problems without losing sight of the mission: build reliable electric aircraft systems that are ready for the real world.