Intern, Medium Voltage Test Engineering

About the role

WHAT TO EXPECT

Heron Power is a startup company building cutting-edge power electronics for the 21st-century grid. We aim to de-bottleneck the growth of electricity generation and consumption with scalable, innovative, and less costly hardware solutions, accelerating the electrification of everything.

Our first goal is to build better converters (inverters & rectifiers) to connect large-scale renewables, storage, and loads to the grid. Heron’s leadership team is made up of seasoned veterans who have designed and shipped gigawatts of power conversion products over the past decade.

We understand that no one individual knows everything. We will all learn a lot together and from each other. We strive to build a collaborative, enriching environment conducive to personal, technical, and career growth. You can expect to work in a dynamic environment, driven by first principles engineering, solving difficult problems—with a strong bias toward hands-on execution and learning by doing.

JOB OVERVIEW

You will build and operate the high-voltage test infrastructure we use to characterize and qualify insulation systems in medium-voltage power electronics. This role owns a real piece of the reliability validation loop: test bench setup, dielectric characterization campaigns, degradation analysis, and structured failure mode documentation. You will work with equipment and methodologies that most EE programs never expose students to—and you will be building the data foundation that informs how we design insulation systems for grid-tied hardware at scale.

HOW YOU WILL CONTRIBUTE

Medium Voltage Test Infrastructure

- Design, build, and operate medium-voltage test benches: HV power supplies, measurement dividers, partial discharge detection systems, protective earthing schemes, and safety interlocks.

- Own bench system design: HV clearances, grounding architecture, protection strategy, measurement integrity, and safe operating procedures.

- Build and document test fixtures for cable assemblies, busbars, insulation specimens, and HV subcomponents—to a standard someone else can operate safely.

- Learn and strictly enforce MV lab safety protocols: electrical clearances, interlock design, lockout/tagout, and safe approach procedures.

Dielectric Characterization & Testing

- Execute dielectric strength tests—AC/DC withstand and impulse—against defined acceptance criteria; own data collection and reporting.

- Perform insulation resistance, polarization index, and dielectric loss (tan δ) measurements using HV megohmmeters, LCR bridges, and dielectric analyzers.

- Run partial discharge (PD) measurements end to end: system setup, acquisition, PRPD pattern generation, and first-pass interpretation.

- Execute accelerated aging and environmental stress campaigns on insulating materials under thermal, humidity, and combined stress conditions.

Degradation Analysis & Closing the Loop