Staff Power Electronics Controls Engineer

Job Title:Staff Power Electronics Controls Engineer

Job Description

Trystar’s team members are our most important asset. We are looking for a Staff Power Electronics Controls Engineer to own the control strategy, modelling, simulation, and verification that make our power conversion products stable and predictable under real use conditions, from concept through certification and production release. You will set the technical direction for the control of active front-end rectifiers, DC/DC converters, three-phase grid-tied and grid-forming inverters, and energy storage systems, including converters that operate in parallel on a shared DC bus. You will lead stability and performance analysis as a senior individual contributor, specify how the controls run in real time, prove that hardware matches the models, and mentor the engineers who build and validate these systems with you.

Location: Merrimack, NH, or Pointe-Claire, QC, is preferred. Travel within North America up to 20%.

In this role you will:

• Define control architectures for power conversion products, including active front-end rectifiers, DC/DC converters, three-phase grid-tied and grid-forming inverters, and energy storage systems.
• Develop grid-following, grid-forming, and virtual synchronous generator (VSG) control strategies, including current and voltage regulation, droop control, virtual inertia, synchronization, and power-sharing functions.
• Develop DC-bus control strategies for converters that operate in parallel on a shared DC bus, including bus voltage regulation, droop and current sharing, stability with constant-power loads, and coordination with energy storage to meet fast load-step response.
• Create averaged, switching, small-signal, and discrete-time models of converters, plants, filters, grids, and loads using MATLAB, Simulink, and related tools.
• Design and tune inner and outer control loops using Bode plots, loop-gain and frequency-response analysis, and other established methods.
• Analyze stability margins, control interactions, resonance, weak-grid behavior, impedance characteristics, harmonics, transients, and robustness across operating conditions and component tolerances.
• Develop and validate synchronization and grid-support functions, including PLL and PLL-less methods, active and reactive power control, volt-var, volt-watt, frequency-watt, ride-through, islanding detection, black start, and seamless operating-mode transitions.
• Specify the real-time implementation of control algorithms, including sampling, discretization, computational delay, PWM, saturation, anti-windup, limit handling, numerical scaling, and protection coordination, and review the production code that embedded firmware engineers write against that specification.
• Plan and execute model-in-the-loop, software-in-the-loop, processor-in-the-loop, hardware-in-the-loop, and laboratory validation, and use frequency-response analysis and system-identification techniques to correlate models with hardware.
• Lead control-performance verification and provide test evidence for applicable standards and grid codes, such as IEEE 1547 and UL 1741, working with compliance engineers across multiple products.
• Write control requirements, architecture documents, design specifications, analysis reports, test plans, and user documentation.
• Collaborate with power electronics, magnetics, hardware, systems, firmware, test, compliance, and manufacturing engineers from concept through production.
• Provide technical leadership for the controls workstream, including technical reviews, risk management, schedules, and design decisions.
• Mentor controls, firmware, and power electronics engineers.

Qualifications

REQUIRED

• Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering or a related technical field, with 10+ years of relevant industrial experience in power electronics controls, converter controls, or grid-connected power systems.
• Deep knowledge of AC/DC, DC/DC, and DC/AC power conversion topologies, converter and inverter dynamics, modulation methods, sensing, and control-oriented plant modelling.
• Expertise in classical and modern control methods, including frequency-domain analysis, Bode and Nyquist techniques, stability margins, root locus, pole-zero placement, state-space analysis, observers, feedforward, and multiloop control.
• Demonstrated experience designing and tuning current, voltage, power, DC-link, and energy-management control loops for power converters.
• Experience with three-phase grid-following and grid-forming inverter controls, including VSG or equivalent virtual-oscillator, droop-based, or virtual-inertia approaches.
• Knowledge of synchronous and stationary reference frames, space vector modulation, Clarke and Park transformations, sequence components, PLL-based synchronization, and weak-grid stability challenges.
• Ability to perform small-signal, impedance-based, frequency-response, and time-domain analysis and to correlate analytical and simulation models with laboratory measurements.
• Proficiency in MATLAB and Simulink for control modelling, simulation, code prototyping, and data analysis.
• Hands-on experience validating control systems using oscilloscopes, power analyzers, frequency-response analyzers, grid simulators, dynamometers or programmable loads, and hardware-in-the-loop platforms.
• Experience with IEEE 1547, UL 1741, and applicable interconnection requirements for grid-support inverter functions and certification testing.
• Working knowledge of real-time digital control implementation on microcontrollers or DSPs, including C-based implementation constraints, sampling, PWM, ADC interfaces, interrupts, timing, fixed- or floating-point considerations, and debugging.
• Ability to read mixed-signal and power electronic schematics and to collaborate effectively on sensing, protection, gate-drive, filter, and hardware-interface design.
• Demonstrated technical leadership, documentation skills, and ability to mentor engineers.

PREFERRED

• Master’s or doctoral degree in electrical engineering, controls, power electronics, or power systems.
• Advanced experience with grid-forming controls, VSG, virtual-oscillator control, droop control, impedance shaping, or stability of inverter-dominated systems.
• Experience controlling converters that operate in parallel on a DC bus, including droop and current sharing and stability with constant-power loads.
• Experience with active front-end and Vienna rectifiers, including sequence-component control under unbalanced input voltage.
• Experience with LCL-filter design and active damping, harmonic compensation, resonant and repetitive controllers, model-predictive control, adaptive control, or nonlinear control.
• Experience with electromagnetic-transient or power-system simulation tools, such as PSCAD, or power electronics simulation tools, such as PSIM, in addition to MATLAB and Simulink.
• Experience with Texas Instruments C2000, ARM, or comparable real-time control processors and automated control-code generation.
• Experience with model-, software-, processor-, and hardware-in-the-loop test automation and requirements-based verification, using platforms such as OPAL-RT, Speedgoat, or comparable systems.
• Working familiarity with CAN, Modbus, Ethernet, TCP/IP, device drivers, and diagnostic interfaces used to configure, monitor, and test control functions.
• Experience with functional safety practices, such as IEC 61508, static analysis, unit testing, configuration management, and cybersecurity considerations for connected power converters.
• NFPA 70E certification.

Skills

• Strong analytical intuition for dynamic systems, stability, and power conversion behavior.
• Ability to move effectively between mathematical models, simulation results, real-time implementation, and laboratory measurements.
• Clear written and verbal communication, including documentation and explanation of control architectures, assumptions, tradeoffs, and test results.
• Collaborative technical leadership across controls, power electronics, firmware, systems, and compliance teams.
• Ability to plan and lead a controls workstream against a detailed development and certification schedule.