VP of Engineering

You are joining as our first internal VP of Engineering, which means you are building this function from the ground up. The role is roughly 80% forward-looking: you will own R&D, drive product innovation, build out our standard design library, and lead the technical work that keeps CORE competitive as we expand into new product categories and market segments. The other 20% is oversight: setting quality guardrails and engineering specifications for our overseas manufacturing partners, supporting your small team, and serving as the senior technical voice that our sales organization and our customers' engineers can rely on.

Product ideas come from across the organization: from sales and business development in the field, from customer conversations, and from senior leadership identifying commercial opportunities. Your job is to catch that vision, stress-test it technically, and turn concepts into real, validated, market-ready solutions. If you have ideas of your own, even better. You will report directly to our CEO and work alongside our VP of Business Development and VP of Marketing as part of a tight executive team where engineering, sales, and marketing are genuinely integrated. That integration is not a talking point here. It is what is driving our growth, and protecting it is a priority.

To start, you will have two direct reports: a domestic quality and manufacturing coordination lead, and an engineer based at our overseas manufacturing partner site. You will also work closely with outside engineering consultants, including one of the most experienced transformer standards engineers in the country, a long-tenured IEEE transformer standards committee member whose depth on inside-the-tank design is unmatched. CORE will not be a training ground for you from an engineering perspective-it will be a place where your expertise shapes real products, earns real customer trust, and drives real business outcomes. We'll rely on you to assess needs and build out a broader team where it makes sense.

A Day in the Life

Your morning starts with a design review. The team has been working on a new padmount configuration that solves a recurring problem on hyperscaler data center campuses: customers keep requesting variations that differ only slightly from a standard 3000 kVA, 34.5 kV unit, driving custom orders, extended lead times, and field installation headaches. You are building a standardized design that covers the vast majority of those requests with a single configurable unit, reducing what has taken three distinct designs per campus down to one. You review the outside-the-tank spec: switchgear integration points, protection device placement, CT configurations, the accessory framework that allows field installation of components without opening the tank or drilling new penetrations. You flag two items that need resolution before the design goes to the overseas manufacturing team.

In the afternoon you jump on a call with a large data center customer. Their electrical engineer has technical questions about how the transformer integrates with their medium-voltage distribution system and wants to understand the protection scheme. You walk them through it clearly and confidently, speaking the same language they do. After the call, your VP of Business Development sends you a quick message: that conversation just moved the deal forward. You make a note to pull together a one-page technical summary for the sales team to use as a leave-behind.

You close the day reviewing a third-party test report on a new substation unit design. You are building the validation package: test results, white paper, engineering documentation. When a customer's engineer asks for proof of performance, you want to hand them something they can stake their reputation on. You draft two pages of technical content and send it to marketing to incorporate into a case study. Engineering and marketing working together on this kind of material is not an afterthought at CORE. It is part of how we earn and keep customer trust.

Every day looks a little different. What stays constant is the pace, the quality bar, and the fact that your work shows up in the field.

Who You Are

You have real experience in medium-voltage transformer and power systems work. You can speak knowledgeably about liquid-filled transformer design, outside-the-tank systems integration, switchgear, protection schemes, and controls architecture, and you have done it in environments where the stakes were real. Data center or large-scale construction experience is important to us: if you have worked on projects where hyperscalers or major developers were the end customer, you already understand the pace, the precision, and the expectations that come with it.

You are not looking to manage a large department. You want to be close to the work, own the technical direction, and see your decisions show up in the field. You are comfortable being the most senior technical voice in the room and you use that credibility to build trust, not slow things down. You communicate clearly and confidently with customer engineering teams, and our sales and business development teams would want you on the call. You thrive in lean, fast-moving environments where the org chart is still being built while you are building in it. And when you look at an industry that has been doing things the same way for 50 years, you see opportunities, not obstacles.

What You'll Be Doing

• Own and drive internal R&D initiatives: take concepts from commercial insight to validated, field-ready engineering solutions with clear milestones and documented outcomes.
• Build and maintain our standard design library for medium-voltage padmount and substation transformers, reducing reliance on fully custom orders and enabling faster, more consistent delivery across data center and construction projects.
• Develop and validate transformer design innovations, with particular focus on outside-the-tank systems integration: switchgear coordination, protection schemes, controls architecture, monitoring systems, and accessory configurations that reduce installation time and field errors for our customers.
• Serve as our senior technical resource for customer-facing conversations, providing engineering credibility that supports the sales and business development process at critical moments.
• Ensure technical commitments made in the sales cycle are robust, defensible, and aligned with our manufacturing capabilities.
• Set engineering specifications and quality guardrails for our overseas manufacturing partners, with oversight of our domestic quality coordinator and our engineer based at the partner manufacturing site.
• Lead third-party testing and validation programs; produce white papers, engineering reviews, and validation packages that meet applicable industry standards and give customer engineering teams the documentation they need.
• Partner with marketing to develop technical sales collateral, case studies, spec sheets, and customer-facing documentation that translate engineering quality into compelling proof points.
• Support IP protection strategy in partnership with legal, including contributing engineering perspective to patent and trade secret decisions.
• Build the technical foundation as CORE expands into new product categories and market segments; this role has the potential to grow into broader engineering leadership as the team scales.

Do you have experience in Test validation method?, Do you have a Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering?, * Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering.

• 10+ years of engineering experience in power systems, medium-voltage electrical infrastructure, or transformer applications. The right candidate has spent meaningful time in this space and can speak fluently about it.
• Strong working knowledge of outside-the-tank systems: switchgear integration, protection and controls architecture, overcurrent protection, CT configurations, monitoring systems, and how transformers interface with upstream and downstream electrical infrastructure.
• Working knowledge of inside-the-tank transformer design: core and coil principles, winding configurations, insulation systems, and protection strategies. Deep manufacturing expertise is not required; our overseas manufacturing partners handle production. Enough knowledge to set specifications, validate designs, and hold an informed conversation with your counterparts is what matters.
• Experience in data center, hyperscaler, or large-scale construction power systems. If you have worked on projects at this scale, you already know the pace and precision these customers expect.
• Experience coordinating with manufacturers or engineering partners: managing technical specifications, reviewing test results, and maintaining quality standards across a supply chain.
• The ability to communicate clearly and confidently with customer engineering teams. Our sales organization would want you on the call.
• Experience leading engineering projects through to documented outcomes: testing, validation, white papers, and customer-facing technical packages.
• Strong written communication skills: you can produce technical documentation that is accurate for an engineer and useful for everyone else.
• A builder's mindset. You have figured things out without a roadmap and are energized by early-stage problems.
• Willing and able to work on-site in Seneca, SC. Relocation assistance is available., * Deep inside-the-tank transformer expertise: core and coil design, winding configurations, insulation systems, fluid cooling, and the nuances of liquid-filled construction.
• Familiarity with substation-class transformer applications, including higher-voltage distribution and the equipment ecosystems around them.
• Experience in an engineering consulting firm doing power system design and specification, particularly for large construction or data center projects.
• IEEE membership or involvement in transformer or power systems standards work.
• Engineering management experience. We are a lean team today, but this role can grow.
• IP and patent experience, or comfort working with legal on trade secret and defensible design strategies.
• Experience at a PE-backed or high-growth company where structure was still being built.
• An interesting hidden talent. We like well-rounded teams.

Pulled from the full job description

• 401(k) matching
• Vision insurance
• Dental insurance
• Relocation assistance
• Life insurance, * Highly competitive base salary, commensurate with experience and seniority.
• Quarterly incentive bonus paid to every employee based on company performance. At our current growth trajectory, this bonus is worth paying attention to. Details discussed during the interview process., * Health insurance stipend via Thatch (thatch.com), designed to cover the cost of your plan at little to no out-of-pocket cost for individual coverage (available after 90 days)
• Dental and Vision plans available
• Life insurance available
• 401(k) with matching: 100% match on first 3%, 50% match from 4-5%
• Time off commensurate with the role and level of seniority.

Working With Us

At CORE, we hire smart, hungry people, give them the tools to move fast, and get out of the way. We are not interested in bureaucracy or legacy thinking. We are interested in building something great, and we want people around us who feel the same way.

We work hard during working hours. We celebrate wins and believe every employee has a stake in the outcome, so we share a portion of profits equally across the entire company every quarter. We hire the kind of people who make everyone around them better.

If you have spent meaningful time in the medium-voltage transformer and power systems world, can talk fluently about liquid-filled transformer design, switchgear integration, and protection schemes, and have worked on data center or large-scale construction projects, this role is worth your full attention. CORE Transformers is building the engineering function that will define our products for the next decade, and we need someone who knows this space and wants to own something real in it. We manufacture dry-type, padmount, and substation transformers from 15 kVA to 30 MVA, up to 230 kV, supplying critical electrical infrastructure to AI-driven data centers, large-scale construction, renewable energy installations, and industrial operations across the country. Our liquid-filled padmount and substation units are the core of our data center business, and that segment is growing at a pace the industry has rarely seen. Leading hyperscalers are deploying at scale alongside top-tier electrical contractors and construction firms, and CORE is earning a seat at the table on those projects through speed, reliability, and a genuine commitment to getting the engineering right. We quote in minutes, ship in weeks, and our designs consistently deliver fewer field defects than major OEM competitors. The demand is there. Now we need the engineering leadership to keep pace with it. This is an unprecedented moment in the transformer market. An industry long dominated by legacy incumbents is suddenly open to a new entrant, because the incumbents simply cannot keep pace with demand. Lead times at major OEMs have stretched to years. Data center developers are desperate for a supplier who can deliver reliably at speed. CORE is that supplier, and the combination of our delivery model, our design reliability, and the relationships we are building with the most sophisticated infrastructure buyers in the world is driving 3x annual revenue growth. We were founded by Randall Maddox and Mitch Garland, the founders of Sunbelt Transformer and Maddox Industrial Transformers. They know this industry from the ground up and built a track record that opens doors. Now we are focused on what comes next. Read on., Full-time, on-site in Seneca, SC. Relocation assistance is available and we mean that as a genuine part of the offer, not a footnote. Upstate South Carolina is a great place to land, with GE Vernova in Greenville, Schneider Electric down the road, and a region that takes manufacturing seriously. If you are currently commuting an hour into a larger metro, there is a real chance you would be trading that commute for a shorter one in a better direction.