Mechanical Design Engineer, Cell Enclosure Design & Validation

Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg marks a defining moment in Europe for Tesla’s mission of accelerating the world’s transition to sustainable energy. Here we will launch revolutionary products on a massive scale, using extraordinary speed, innovation and efficiency. Our employees will ensure that we achieve our goals, and we welcome you to help us write the next chapter of our success story. 

We’re seeking top engineers to design and validate paradigm-shifting cells, the biggest lever on affordable, abundant, and performant EVs for all. This role focus on enclosure parts (Can, Lid, Terminals)—the protective backbone of every Tesla battery cell. 

Our vertically integrated program is industry one-of-a-kind: your improvements in enclosure design, assembly methods, and validation will cascade through the organization, reshaping how battery packs, full vehicles, and production lines perform. The role requires strong 1st principles, a passion for advancing state-of-the-art, and the tenacity to ensure the success of your ideas. 

Our team habitually defies convention and designs each component to the limits of physics. You’ll own prototype tooling for innovative assembly testing, create high-confidence component-level tests that proxy abuse cell performance (minimizing full abuse testing needs), set & validate requirements. Your environment will include battle-proven industry experts, high-aptitude recent graduates, and open access to a wealth of domain leaders across every Tesla department. 

We feel immense daily satisfaction surrounding ourselves with high-ownership, empathetic, truth-seeking, continuously learning, mission-oriented people—join us!

• Design and Validation of cell enclosure mechanical parts (Can, Lid, Terminals, Polymer Seals);
• Develop high-confidence component-level tests (e.g., mechanical, thermal proxies) that accurately reflect full-cell abuse performance, reducing reliance on full cell destructive abuse testing while accelerating validation cycles;
• Own prototype tooling, allowing new parts to be integrated into fully functional cells for preliminary validation. Interact with mass production tooling owners;
• Own prototyping, basic testing and analysis (support advanced testing, including FEA/simulations for abuse surrogates);
• Complete DFMEA and fault tree analysis focused on enclosure integrity under abuse conditions;
• Author clear technical documentation & deliver live presentations on design/validation/test strategies;
• Occasional travel to Tesla factories, satellite team sites, and suppliers (domestic/international as needed).

• Education background in mechanical/materials engineering, or the equivalent in experience and evidence of exceptional ability;
• Strong knowledge of the fundamentals of Mechanics, Thermodynamics, Heat Transfer and Electricity;
• Foundational knowledge in GD&T (proficiency is a plus);
• Well versed using 3D CAD software, preferably CATIA;
• Familiarity with FEA tools (e.g., Abaqus, ANSYS) for structural/thermal simulations;
• Experience designing highly loaded parts with multidisciplinary requirements. Lithium-ion battery enclosures a plus, but high value also seen in aerospace components such as turbines, rocket motors encasings, satellites, or similar high-reliability applications;
• Deep familiarity with properties and applications of mass production engineering metals (e.g., aluminum, steels), polymers, and coatings for enclosures—particularly behavior at elevated temperatures, heat affected zones, strain hardening and other process-induced effects;
• Hands-on fabrication skills at some point in the career, student engineering competitions, hobbies etc.;
• Proven experience with experiment design/setup, data acquisition, and analysis—especially developing surrogate tests for safety/abuse conditions;
• Ability to hit deadlines under pressure and manage shifting requirements, multiple simultaneous priorities;
• Coordination of builds and prototype tooling handoffs, tracking efficient progression from design to test;
• Dissection of samples after fabrication / testing, for metallurgical analysis.