Senior Battery Structures Engineer

Advanced Propulsion Engineering at General Motors is a rapidly developing area of automotive technology. We are creating cutting-edge propulsion systems that provide industry-leading energy, power, durability, and safety capability for future vehicles, including EV, HEV, and advanced concepts. Our team is critical to achieving GM’s vision of Zero Emissions, Zero Crashes, and Zero Congestion.

As a Battery Structures Engineer within the New Products Engineering team, you will develop and mature battery enclosure and structural integration solutions for advanced vehicle architectures. You will apply strong engineering fundamentals to translate vehicle- and pack-level requirements into robust, production-feasible battery structure designs.

This role is a technical individual-contributor position. The successful candidate will independently own significant design workstreams, lead detailed technical problem solving, and partner across battery, vehicle, safety, manufacturing, CAE, packaging, thermal, electrical, and supplier teams. You will help deliver battery structures that balance performance, mass, cost, manufacturability, safety, durability, sealing, and integration requirements.

Responsibilities

● Be committed to safety in everything our team does.

● Promote an inclusive team environment that values diverse backgrounds, opinions, and ideas.

● Design and mature battery enclosure, mounting, and body/frame integration solutions for new product and advanced vehicle programs.

● Translate pack- and vehicle-level requirements into component, subsystem, and interface requirements for battery structures.

● Develop concepts, CAD layouts, engineering studies, and supporting technical documentation for battery structural systems and interfaces.

● Perform and support feasibility assessments and design trade studies involving mass, cost, packaging, structural performance, manufacturability, tooling, and investment.

● Own assigned battery structure workstreams from early concept through design maturation, virtual validation, issue resolution, and handoff to downstream development teams.

● Collaborate with CAE, Safety, and test teams to interpret crash, durability, stiffness, dynamics, sealing, and other analysis results; incorporate findings into practical design improvements.

● Develop and refine structural load paths, joints, attachment strategies, cross-members, covers, trays, reinforcements, and interfaces with vehicle body, frame, chassis, thermal, electrical, and high-voltage systems.

● Apply design-for-manufacturing principles to proposed solutions, including metal forming, castings, extrusions, joining, sealing, assembly, body shop processing, tooling, and serviceability considerations.

● Support technical reviews, math syncs, virtual gates, design releases, and cross-functional issue-resolution activities with appropriate engineering rigor.

● Work with suppliers and manufacturing partners to evaluate technical feasibility, mature designs, and resolve design or process risks.

● Benchmark battery enclosures, structural technologies, joining methods, and vehicle-integration approaches to identify opportunities for improved performance and competitiveness.

● Contribute to engineering standards, design guidelines, lessons learned, and best practices for battery structures and body integration.

● Communicate technical status, risks, decisions, and recommendations clearly to engineering leadership and cross-functional partners.

Required Qualifications

● Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, Automotive Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or a related engineering discipline.

● 5+ years of relevant engineering experience in vehicle structures, battery structures, body structures, chassis structures, or closely related product design areas.

● Direct experience with structural design and development for integrated automotive systems; battery enclosure or RESS structural integration experience is strongly preferred.

● Demonstrated ability to develop and mature mechanical designs from early concepts through detailed engineering and validation.

● Working knowledge of structural load paths, crashworthiness, durability, stiffness, vibration, sealing, and packaging considerations.

● Experience applying production-feasible design practices involving metal stampings, castings, extrusions, joining, sealing, tooling, and assembly processes.

● Ability to perform and communicate engineering trade studies that balance mass, cost, performance, packaging, timing, and manufacturability.

● Experience working in a cross-functional vehicle development environment with CAE, Safety, Manufacturing, Packaging, Thermal, Electrical, Chassis, and supplier partners.

● Strong problem-solving, communication, collaboration, and organizational skills.

● Ability to work effectively both independently and as part of a technical team.

Preferred Qualifications

● Experience with battery pack enclosure design, battery mounting systems, underbody integration, or RESS-to-vehicle interfaces.

● Experience supporting vehicle crash, durability, stiffness, formability, or sealing analysis and converting results into design actions.

● Familiarity with GM vehicle development processes, virtual gates, design release practices, and applicable internal requirements.

● Understanding of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards and automotive safety requirements relevant to battery structures and vehicle integration.

● Experience using CAD, PLM, tolerance analysis, and engineering documentation tools in a production vehicle-development environment.

● Experience working directly with suppliers to mature concepts, review manufacturability, and address technical issues.

● Experience with DFSS methods or structured problem-solving tools.

● Master’s degree in engineering.