Case Study Systems Engineer (f/m/d) power electronics

Initial situation / Preliminary considerations

Our client is a German automaker with a well revered international reputation. Due to the current changes within the automotive sector which are specifically focused on e-mobility, our client decided to enlarge its’ Research and Development department to meet the needs of the market.

The dependency on automotive suppliers in the field of power electronics and battery management is something our client wants to limit in the not too distant future. To gain more know-how in this sector it is imperative to build up an in-house department with highly trained specialists.

The principal task of power electronics is the control and conversion of electric power. The effectiveness of electric cars is based on efficient power electronics units. Apart from e-mobility it is also a basic component in the power generation sector (especially wind and solar power), in modern production lines (robotics and industry 4.0) and in power transmission. Next to classic street used BEV you can find electric drives in Automated Guided Vehicles (AGV´s), in material handling equipment and in small vehicles (Golf carts and Post cars).

As an OEM our client works closely with automotive suppliers and engineering service companies which has led to a high demand for personnel that are able to track all projects both internally and externally. For this project we were mandated to search for system engineers.

Procedure / Project realisation

When creating the target-list we considered the criteria demanded by our client and found 200 possible target companies. Our list included other automakers, automotive suppliers, solar and wind power companies and companies in the high voltage sector. We used the methodology based on having a broad variety of possible targets to ensure that we efficiently found the best possible candidates within the agreed time frame.

After contacting more than 100 candidates from our target list we presented two candidates from the solar industry to the client. Both candidates had strong experience in power electronics due to work in research and development on different converters. But due to a lack of knowledge about automotive standards and limited work experience with external suppliers, it became obvious in the presentation that these two candidates would not fit. Automotive specifics, such as V-model, software development with ASIL standards, IATG 16949 or project management with DOORS are unknown in their industry.

Together with the client we made the decision to exclude all non-automotive companies and focus on only automotive and automotive related companies. This eliminated a lot of possible candidates and heightened the difficulty of the search.

Being that most German automakers and suppliers are based in the state of Baden Württemberg which is in the south of Germany, we had to convince most of the candidates to relocate to where our client is based. We presented our client with four candidates from automotive suppliers and engineering service companies and at the end of the search process two of them were placed with our client.

In total we identified more than 800 fitting candidates and approached 413 with this opportunity, to take this career step and join our client.

The effort exerted during the search justified the success attained and due to this our client has engaged us for further searches to enlarge its research and development department.