About the role
ABOUT THE COMPANY
Vandrel is rebuilding America's high-performance magnet wire supply chain. We design and manufacture PEEK-insulated copper conductor in modular micro-factories, producing the wire that goes into the motors, transformers, and power systems that matter most: defense and aerospace platforms, EV traction, and grid and stationary storage.
Today, insulated magnet wire is produced by a short list of European and Asian suppliers. That is a problem for every US program that needs higher voltage, higher temperature, or higher power density. Our team is small, senior, and hands-on, and we are closing that gap.
WHAT YOU'LL BE DOING
- Bridge Material to System: Translate Vandrel wire’s material properties (dielectric strength, temperature rating, thinner insulation, higher slot fill) into motor-level performance deltas customers care about: continuous torque, peak power, thermal headroom, bus voltage, eLiciency, partial discharge life.
- Run Customer Engineering: Work directly with design teams at defense drone and autonomy primes, aerospace motor programs, EV OEMs, industrial drives, and gridscale power electronics to get Vandrel wire designed into their systems.
- Build Performance Models: Quantify the gain Vandrel wire delivers in a given motor topology through thermal, electromagnetic, and dielectric modeling.
- Drive Winding Design Conversations: Own the technical dialogue on slot fill, insulation system compatibility, and hairpin versus distributed winding tradeoLs with customer engineering teams.
- Define Vandrel’s First SKUs: Shape the initial product line based on real customer use cases: conductor size, insulation thickness, build class, and temperature class. Feed requirements into the process and materials roadmap.
- Own Qualification and Test: Support customer qualification (HIPOT, partial discharge, thermal aging, fluid compatibility, thermal shock, vibration). Partner with process engineering to reproduce failures and harden the product.
- Own the Technical Story: Build and present the narrative for why Vandrel wire wins at the chemistry, motor, and system levels. Represent Vandrel at customer reviews, technical conferences, and design-in sessions.
REQUIRED SKILLS
- 5+ years in motor design, electrical machines, power electronics, or traction drive engineering.
- Fluency in winding design and insulation systems (magnet wire, enamel, impregnation, slot liner, phase paper).
- Strong grasp of thermal and dielectric constraints in high-power motors.
- Comfort across the interface between material, motor, and system: you move easily between polymer chemistry and bus voltage.
- Customer-facing chops: you can run a technical review with a customer’s chief motor engineer and walk out with a next step.
- Experience with defense or aerospace motor programs, 800V+ systems, or highspeed motors (above 20,000 rpm) is a plus.
- Bias toward shipping.
COMPENSATION AND EQUITY
Compensation is benchmarked to senior motor and electrification talent at venture backed hard tech companies. Base salary is competitive and equity is material; both scale with experience and scope of ownership.
For candidates with deep motor and systems credibility and the appetite to own Vandrel’s commercial-technical surface from day one, we are open to structuring this as a cofounder-level package: co-founder equity, commensurate title, and the authority that comes with it.