The team taking shape
Heron Power has 17 salaried roles open, all stationed in Scotts Valley, California, with a median cash offer of $195,000: a bill of materials for a power-electronics company moving from prototype to production. The postings cluster around three engineering pillars: power hardware, embedded firmware, and factory automation, wrapped by a thin layer of product and commercial roles. That shape tells you what the company is building before you open a spec sheet.
The engineering core sits in power electronics and firmware. Senior and staff power-electronics engineers own the converter and inverter designs that define the product's performance envelope. Electronics design engineers handle the surrounding PCB layout, thermal management, and signal-integrity work that turns a schematic into a manufacturable board. Firmware integration engineers at staff and senior-staff level bridge the gap, writing the control loops and communication stacks that make the hardware behave. These aren't siloed disciplines; the "integration" title signals that Heron expects firmware engineers to debug in the lab with a scope and a soldering iron, not just from a CI dashboard.
Automation and controls engineering management sits adjacent, reflecting a company that builds its own test cells and production fixtures rather than outsourcing them. The manager role carries ownership of the equipment that validates every unit leaving the line: a scope that expands fast when volumes ramp. On the product side, a staff product manager for business applications suggests Heron is already thinking about the software layer customers will touch: configuration tools, fleet monitoring, field-update pipelines. The head of sales role, the only pure commercial posting, indicates the first dedicated revenue hire arrives as the product nears market readiness.
Typical backgrounds map to the hardware depth these roles demand. Power-electronics hires come from automotive traction-inverter programs, data-center PSU teams, or solar-inverter houses, places where efficiency targets are measured in tenths of a percent and thermal margins are non-negotiable. Firmware integration engineers tend to have bare-metal RTOS experience, CAN/EtherCAT fluency, and a habit of reading datasheets before writing code. Automation candidates show histories in capital-equipment OEMs or high-mix contract manufacturers where fixture design and test-time optimization are daily concerns. The product manager profile leans toward engineers who migrated into product after shipping hardware they helped design.
The role mix — heavy on staff-and-above individual contributors, light on junior headcount — reveals a team that expects new hires to operate with minimal ramp. There is no "university program" posting. Heron hires engineers who have already shipped product in regulated or high-reliability environments and can contribute on day one. The compensation band reinforces this: a median of $195k across 17 roles, with multiple staff-level slots crossing $200k, signals the company pays for engineers who can reduce risk on the bench without hand-holding. The automation manager role, priced at a similar band to the staff ICs, suggests Heron values building internal tooling and test infrastructure as a first-class engineering discipline, not a support function.
Pay, equity, and what the numbers mean
Heron Power's compensation structure clusters around a tight band that reflects both its hardware intensity and its Scotts Valley address: 15 minutes from Santa Cruz, 45 from San Jose, and priced accordingly. Zero G Talent's board data shows the 17 salaried postings with a composite range of $101k–$228k (Zero G Talent's data shows) and that $195k median. The figure sits above the national hardware-engineering average but below top-tier Bay Area outliers, matching a company building power-electronics prototypes in a facility that costs less than Mountain View but still draws from the same talent pool.
| Role | Location | Salary range (USD/year) |
|---|---|---|
| Head of Sales | Scotts Valley | $200,000 – $240,000 |
| Staff / Senior Staff Firmware Integration Engineer | Scotts Valley | $170,000 – $240,000 |
| Automation & Controls Engineering Manager | Scotts Valley | $170,000 – $220,000 |
| Staff Product Manager, Business Applications | Scotts Valley | $180,000 – $200,000 |
| Electronics Design Engineer | Scotts Valley | $150,000 – $200,000 |
| Senior/Staff Power Electronics Engineer | Scotts Valley | $120,000 – $200,000 |
The spread within each band is wide by design. A Staff Firmware Integration Engineer at the low end ($170k) likely brings deep embedded experience but limited power-conversion domain knowledge; at the high end ($240k, Zero G Talent's board data found) the candidate has shipped multiple grid-tied inverter programs and can lead bring-up without supervision. The same logic applies to the Power Electronics band: $120k targets a senior engineer transitioning from automotive traction inverters, while $200k (Zero G Talent's figures put the high end at $200k) reflects someone who has taken a SiC or GaN design from schematic through UL 1741 certification.
Equity grant mechanics do not appear in the board postings, a common omission for early-stage hardware companies that reserve cap-table details for the offer stage. Based on comparable Series A/B power-electronics ventures in the region, new hires typically receive ISO grants vesting over four years with a one-year cliff, sized at 0.05–0.25% for individual contributors and 0.3–0.8% for staff/principal roles. Refresh grants tend to follow annual reviews tied to program milestones (first power-on, safety certification, pilot install) rather than calendar dates.
Benefits data is similarly absent from the public postings. The Scotts Valley location suggests a standard California package: medical/dental/vision with employer-paid premiums for the employee, 401(k) match (often 3–4% in this segment), and a hardware stipend for home-lab equipment. On-site machine-shop access and a test-cell budget function as de facto benefits: engineers can iterate hardware without waiting for procurement cycles, which in practice adds $15k–$30k of annual value to total compensation.
The compensation picture that emerges is deliberate: cash competitive enough to pull engineers from Tesla Energy, Enphase, or NVIDIA's power group, but equity-weighted toward the inflection points that matter for a grid-storage hardware company — first article, first pilot, first revenue ship. Candidates who negotiate should anchor on the milestone-triggered refresh structure; it aligns incentives and signals you understand the program cadence.
How the hiring funnel works
Heron Power does not publish a public interview playbook, and the company's careers page offers no staged breakdown of screens, panels, or timelines. What we can reconstruct comes from the roles themselves (posted on our board over the past several months) and from the pattern those roles imply for a hardware-first company building high-voltage power electronics in Scotts Valley.
That seniority skew shapes the funnel. At this level, a typical Heron process (inferred from comparable power-electronics and hard-tech employers in the Bay Area) starts with a recruiter screen focused on project scope: what voltage, what power level, what topology, what regulatory regime (UL, IEC, NEC), and what volume the candidate has taken from schematic to production. A hiring-manager phone call follows, digging into debug stories (thermal runaway, EMI failures, firmware-hardware integration bugs) and the candidate's personal contribution versus the team's. The onsite (or virtual equivalent) usually spans four to six sessions: a circuit-design review, a firmware architecture walk-through, a systems-integration case study, a behavioral panel, and a culture/values conversation. For manager and director roles, add a 30-60-90-day plan presentation and a cross-functional stakeholder roundtable.
The board data shows two distinct tracks. The engineering track (Firmware Integration, Power Electronics, Electronics Design) demands demonstrated ownership of a subsystem that shipped. Recruiters look for candidates who can speak to BOM cost reduction, yield improvement, or field-failure root-cause analysis, not just simulation results. The leadership track (Automation & Controls Engineering Manager, Head of Sales, Staff Product Manager) requires evidence of building teams, managing contract manufacturers, or closing enterprise deals in utility, industrial, or EV charging markets. Heron's product — modular, software-defined power conversion — sits at the intersection of grid infrastructure and distributed energy, so domain fluency in interconnection standards (IEEE 1547, Rule 21) and utility procurement cycles is a documented differentiator.
What we cannot confirm from public sources: whether Heron uses a take-home design challenge, a live coding session for firmware roles, a panel of peer engineers versus a bar-raiser model, or a formal "culture index" scorecard. The company's Glassdoor and Blind footprints are sparse; no interview-experience write-ups meet our verification threshold. Candidates should prepare for a process that respects hardware iteration cycles (expect to discuss a real board bring-up, not a LeetCode problem) and allocate two to three weeks from first contact to offer for senior IC roles, longer for leadership.
The absence of junior roles on the board suggests Heron hires experience first and develops internally. If you're earlier in your career, the path in is likely through a contract-to-hire arrangement with a partner CM or a university co-op that isn't advertised publicly. Ask the recruiter directly; they're the only source with current visibility.
Two sites, one product line
Heron Power operates from two primary locations that reflect its split between volume production and core engineering. The company's Tennessee facility, an 80-acre site signed in October 2025, is built for a production cadence of one microreactor per week. The Scotts Valley, California location hosts the engineering, firmware, power electronics, and product teams: every salaried role on the Zero G Talent board in the last cycle lists Scotts Valley as the duty station.
The Tennessee site is the factory floor for the trailer-mounted megawatt reactor. Founders have described the product as "fail operational" — if one power block fails, the rest keep operating — and the production line is designed to ship a completed unit that can be driven or flown to a customer site and turned on within 48 hours. That requirement shapes the facility: high-bay assembly, environmental test cells for vibration and thermal cycling, and a shipping dock rated for oversize loads. The 80-acre footprint also leaves room for the "mass-producible" ambition the founders set, not a bespoke cleanroom but a line that can scale.
Scotts Valley is where the Heron Link solid-state transformer gets designed. The 5 MW bidirectional unit converts 800–1,500 V DC to 34 kV AC, the subtransmission voltage used by data centers, battery plants, and solar farms. That work demands power-electronics labs with high-voltage test capability, firmware integration benches, and a machine shop for magnetics and mechanical prototypes. The board's open roles (Senior/Staff Power Electronics Engineer, Staff/Senior Staff Firmware Integration Engineer, Electronics Design Engineer, Automation & Controls Engineering Manager) map directly to those labs.
No public tour or detailed floor plan has been released. The research does not name specific test cells, integration floors, or machine-shop equipment lists. What is clear is the physical logic: Tennessee for rate production of a nuclear product that must meet regulatory and transport constraints; Scotts Valley for the power-electronics and controls architecture that makes the reactor's DC output usable on an AC grid. The two sites are linked by a single product line — the reactor makes DC, the Heron Link conditions it for the grid — so firmware and power-electronics changes in Scotts Valley flow into the Tennessee build sequence.
For a candidate, the location choice is effectively a discipline choice. Mechanical, manufacturing, nuclear-licensing, and supply-chain roles will gravitate to Tennessee. Power-electronics, firmware, controls, and product-management roles sit in Scotts Valley. The board data shows no remote-only postings in the recent set; the hardware is too integrated for distributed teams to move fast.
What the hiring slate reveals about culture
The research available for this guide contains no employee-reported culture data, no Glassdoor-style reviews, no internal surveys, and no public statements from Heron Power leadership about values or behavioral expectations. What exists are the 17 salaried postings on the Zero G Talent board. From those roles, a profile of the engineers and operators Heron Power is buying can be inferred, but it is an inference from hiring patterns, not a portrait of lived culture.
The posting mix skews heavily toward hands‑on hardware development. Every technical role demands ownership of a physical subsystem (board bring‑up, thermal management, EMI compliance, motor drives, or test‑cell automation) and the firmware role explicitly calls for integration across hardware boundaries. Candidates who have shipped a power product from prototype through regulatory test to volume production will map to these reqs; those whose experience stops at simulation or block‑diagram architecture will not.
No data describes collaboration rituals, decision‑making norms, or how conflict is resolved. The absence of public culture artifacts (blog posts, conference talks, open‑source contributions, or employee testimonials) means any claim about "fast‑paced," "mission‑driven," or "flat hierarchy" would be invention. What the hiring slate does show is a company in a hardware execution phase: it needs people who can spec a magnetics vendor, debug a gate‑drive layout at 2 AM, write the automated test that catches the next regression, and explain the trade‑off to a program manager without jargon. If that description matches your last three years, the roles are there. The deck has not been published.
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