3553 - Senior Staff Engineer, Module R&D

The solar electric industry is an exciting and rapidly growing business, providing excellent career opportunities and the great satisfaction of having a positive impact on the environment.

SunPower Corp. (www.sunpowercorp.com) designs, manufactures and deploys the world’s highest efficiency solar panels, and is a leading global provider of large-scale solar power systems.

SunPower’s R&D team developed the all-back contact solar cell in 2005, just announced 20.4% efficiency modules and is presently working on the next generation technologies. The ideal candidate is motivated by understanding and solving the module materials performance and degradation, thinking out of the box and able to deliver results in a high pace environment.

We are looking for an exceptionally smart and motivated candidate who has demonstrated a capacity for scientific innovation, problem solving and leadership. In this role he/ she will be responsible for the development of next generation module technology platforms.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Develop, test, qualify and support introduction to manufacturing of next generation encapsulants for increased performance and reliability of PV modules
• Develop testing and qualification protocols, material specification and in-process control for new materials in modules
• Develop and optimize technologies/solutions for module manufacturing to reduce cost
• Develop and perform modeling of stresses in modules and derive critical material properties as it related to reliability of the modules
• Work closely with reliability to develop acceleration factors for new materials introduced in module.
• Develop new cutting-edge diagnostics and testing protocols to support module materials development in R&D Laboratory and Manufacturing.
• Lead the development and purchasing of new tools for material characterization and testing.

Education, Experience, and Qualifications
• Minimum PhD in Polymers, Chemistry, Material Science, Physics or related fields
• Experience in Photovoltaics and/or Semiconductor field desired
• Knowledge of polymer chemistry, formulations and failure mechanisms as it relates to 25 years reliability and warranty of PV modules in various field conditions
• Experience with electrical and optical characterization of solar cells and modules
• Experience with developing and reliability testing of encapsulants/backsheets/coatings desired
• Experience with modeling of stresses in packages (eg. Comsol) required
• Knowledge of materials (eg. encapsulant, backsheet, glass) characterization and failure analysis techniques
• Knowledge of Statistical analysis of data (eg. JMP), DOE, Labview
• Excellent communication skills, self-driven, able to drive projects to timely completion by working with multiple teams
• Excellent problem solving skills
• Hands on work experience in lab environment; able to set up new experiments
SunPower offers an attractive compensation package that consists of a competitive salary and equity. The company also offers an array of generous employee benefits.

Please send resume to David.Sneed@sunpowercorp.com.