Mechanical Engineer — High-Current Power Path & Busbar Design

Location: Berkeley, CA (onsite)

Type: 6-month contract-to-hire

Day in the Life

You start the morning reviewing a power path update: copper cross-sections, bend radii, and joint strategies for a set of busbars that will carry serious current from battery cells to the grid interface. You sanity-check your approach with thermal hand calculations, build a quick Excel sizing tool to validate temperature rise, then jump into CAD to package components inside a large enclosure. After lunch, you finalize sheet metal panel details for production, tightening GD&T where needed to ensure the assembly goes together smoothly on the line. You review cost-down ideas on a previous design and sync with a supplier to make sure first articles arrive exactly to spec. Every decision you make moves the product closer to high-volume, reliable builds.

About the Role

Our client is a venture-backed energy storage company producing grid-scale battery systems. They’re transitioning from initial customer deployments to high-volume manufacturing and need a mechanical engineer who owns the physical power path—busbars, harnesses, conductors, and the surrounding enclosures and panels—from concept through production. This is a design role, not a catalog selection role: you’ll create components purpose-built for manufacturability and repeatability.

What You’ll Work On

• Engineer and size busbars, harnesses, and conductors for high-current power distribution.
• Perform thermal hand calculations and build Excel-based sizing tools for heat generation and dissipation.
• Package electrical subassemblies inside large enclosures with clear service and safety considerations.
• Design sheet metal panels and enclosure components for scalable production.
• Refine existing designs to reduce cost and improve assembly reliability on the production line.
• Partner with suppliers and contract manufacturers to achieve right-first-time parts.

What You Bring

• BS in Mechanical Engineering.
• 2+ years of mechanical design for power electronics (EV, battery packs, energy storage, high-voltage equipment, or similar).
• Hands-on experience designing busbars, harnesses, or other high-current conductors.
• Strong thermal fundamentals: energy balance, heat generation/dissipation, and component sizing.
• At least one product taken from concept through production.
• Real DFM on production parts (machined, sheet metal, plastic, or copper)—not just prototypes.
• Ability to work onsite in Berkeley, CA.

Nice to Have

• Experience with high-voltage DC systems.
• Low- to mid-volume manufacturing ramp experience.
• Direct collaboration with contract manufacturers.
• CAD and GD&T proficiency (SolidWorks, Creo, NX, or similar).

Why This Opportunity

Grid storage is scaling fast, and this team is beyond the science-project phase and into real production. You’ll ship hands-on designs on a product still being shaped—this isn’t just another iteration of a well-defined box.

About Technical Talent Group

Technical Talent Group is an engineering staffing firm placing embedded, hardware, electrical, mechanical, and semiconductor engineers.