Redwood Materials is an American clean energy company headquartered in Sparks, Nevada, focused on securing domestic supplies of critical battery materials and providing large-scale energy storage solutions. The company recycles end-of-life batteries to recover lithium, nickel, cobalt, and copper, creating one of the largest domestic sources of these critical minerals in the United States. Its operations support the broader transition away from reliance on foreign supply chains for materials essential to electric vehicles and energy storage systems. Through its Redwood Energy division, the company designs, integrates, and deploys large-scale energy storage systems for data centers and the national grid, utilizing both new and repurposed batteries to deliver cost-effective solutions. Redwood Materials partners with major automotive, technology, and energy companies including Volkswagen Group of America, Panasonic, GM Ultium Cells, Toyota, BMW, Amazon, Volvo, and Southern Company, reflecting its central role in the emerging domestic battery supply chain. Founded by former Tesla Chief Technology Officer JB Straubel, Redwood Materials was established with the mission of building a circular economy for batteries, reducing waste, lowering the carbon footprint of energy storage, and strengthening American energy independence. The company holds ISO 45001 and ISO 14001 certifications, underscoring its commitment to occupational health, safety, and environmental management standards.
About Redwood Materials
Redwood is localizing a global battery supply chain that seamlessly integrates recovery, reuse, and recycling — keeping critical minerals in circulation and driving the energy transition. Founded in 2017, we’re delivering low-cost and large-scale energy storage and producing battery materials in the U.S. for the first time, all from batteries we already have.
Test Automation Engineering Intern
Redwood Energy is building some of the fastest, lowest-cost energy storage in the U.S. from both new battery modules and second-life EV packs. Second-life hardware arrives with a history — different chemistries, capacities, and states of health — and every unit has to be proven safe and reliable before it ships. That proof comes from test: the automated systems that exercise the firmware and electronics inside our products and decide whether they're ready for the field.
Our test engineering team builds those systems — the test stands on the production floor, the hardware-in-the-loop benches that validate firmware releases, and the CI pipelines that tie them together. As a Test Automation Engineering Intern, you'll work alongside our engineers building the next generation of this test capability. You'll write Python that drives real instruments and real battery hardware, help bring up new test stands from the bench up, and debug failures where the root cause could live in the test code, the firmware, or the unit under test. This is a great opportunity to apply what you've learned in coursework to production test systems, with mentorship from experienced engineers along the way.
Responsibilities will include:
- Test Automation: Write and maintain Python test automation for firmware and hardware validation, using pytest and our internal test frameworks.
- Instrument Control: Develop drivers and tooling for programmable power supplies, electronic loads, data acquisition, and switching hardware over protocols like SCPI, CAN, and Modbus.
- Test Stand Bring-Up: Help bring up new test stands — from fixtures and wiring through the software that sequences them — as we expand our validation capability.
- System Debugging: Investigate real failures on real equipment, using CAN traces, instrument logs, and bench tools to determine whether the fault lies in the test code, the fixture, or the unit under test.
- Continuous Integration: Add regression coverage to our CI pipelines so firmware changes are validated automatically rather than by hand.
- Documentation & Process: Contribute to documentation and test processes that support taking test systems from prototype toward production.
- You'll own a scoped project end to end and present your results to the engineering team at the close of the internship.
Desired Qualifications:
- Background: Currently pursuing a BS or MS in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Mechatronics, or a related field.
- Programming Foundations: Working proficiency in Python, including comfort reading and modifying a codebase you did not write.
- Testing Experience: Experience writing automated tests with pytest or a comparable framework, from coursework, projects, or prior internships.
- Version Control: Experience with Git and a pull-request-based development workflow.
- EE Fundamentals: Solid grasp of circuit basics — voltage, current, resistance, and power, and how they relate — sufficient to predict what a measurement should read and recognize when it doesn't.
- Hardware Fundamentals: Able to read a schematic, wiring diagram, or datasheet and act on it; hands-on experience working safely around energized equipment — power supplies, loads, or battery hardware — from lab work, projects, or prior internships.
- Communication Protocols: Familiarity with CAN, Modbus, SCPI, or other instrument and industrial protocols is a plus, even if only from classwork or personal projects.
- Linux: Familiarity with the Linux command line is a plus.
- Curiosity & Rigor: A safety-conscious mindset, strong attention to detail, and eagerness to learn how production test systems are built. Prior industry or energy storage experience is not expected.
The position is full-time. Compensation will be commensurate with experience.
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