Director-Product Compliance

Title: Director-Product Compliance Location: Reno, Nevada, United States; San Francisco, California, United States

Head of Compliance — Amperesand

About Amperesand

Amperesand is building next-generation power infrastructure systems for data centers, EV charging platforms, and future energy applications. Our systems combine advanced power electronics, embedded controls, and scalable energy architectures to rethink how power is converted, controlled, and deployed.

Compliance is the team that guides the company through the certification process from inception through authorization to mark in a way that our customers and regulators can trust.

About the Role

We are looking for a Director, Product Compliance to evolve, build, and lead Amperesand's compliance department and own all compliance activity across the company's solid-state transformer platforms. This is a high-visibility, hands-on department leadership role. In this role, you are accountable for the full compliance program, including electrical safety, functional safety, cybersecurity, EMC/EMI, and certification execution, as well as for the people who deliver it.

As the Head of Compliance, you will operate as both a functional leader and a hands-on technical authority. You will set the strategy and build the organization while remaining directly engaged in critical technical reviews, certification activities, standards interpretation, testing strategy, and issue resolution. As the team scales, you will develop leaders and subject-matter experts while maintaining technical ownership of the overall compliance program.

UL 2877 and UL 1741 are the primary standards governing Amperesand's products and the backbone of the compliance program you will own. All other applicable standards, including IEC/UL 60730-1, IEC 62443, UL 1998, UL 991, IEEE 1547.1, and adjacent grid-interconnection and functional safety frameworks, are supporting standards that you will integrate into Amperesand's primary compliance framework.

This role combines strong people leadership with the technical depth and hands-on credibility to be Amperesand's internal and external authority on compliance, and the communication skill to align engineering, product, and executive stakeholders as well as customers and certification bodies around a single compliance strategy.

What You'll Do

Own the Compliance Department

• Build, lead, and scale Amperesand's compliance department as its functional leader — hiring, developing, and managing compliance engineers and managers across all compliance disciplines while remaining hands-on in critical compliance, certification, and technical activities.
• Set department-wide priorities, resourcing, and compliance roadmaps, and be personally accountable for the certification readiness of every Amperesand product line.
• Establish performance management, mentoring, and career development practices that build a durable, senior compliance organization.

Lead Compliance Strategy — UL 2877 and UL 1741 as the Primary Framework

• Define and execute Amperesand's overall product compliance strategy using UL 2877 and UL 1741 as the primary governing standards.
• Own the mapping of every supporting standard, functional safety (IEC/UL 60730-1), cybersecurity (IEC 62443), and related frameworks (UL 1998, UL 991, IEEE 1547.1) into compliance-driven product requirements.
• Serve as Amperesand's internal technical authority and final decision-maker on compliance interpretation, acceptance criteria, and risk trade-offs.
• Remain directly engaged in complex standards interpretation, technical reviews, and compliance decisions where hands-on technical leadership is required.

Drive Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Partner directly with Engineering, Firmware, Controls, Systems Engineering, Product Management, and executive leadership to embed compliance requirements into product architecture from concept through certification.
• Act as the primary point of alignment when compliance, schedule, and engineering priorities conflict — resolving trade-offs with data and clear rationale.
• Work directly with engineering teams to identify and resolve compliance issues during product development, ensuring compliance requirements are incorporated early.
• Represent compliance directly to customers, translating certification status and risk into terms a commercial or technical customer audience can act on.

Own Certification and NRTL / Test Lab Relationships

• Serve as executive-level point of contact for NRTLs and test laboratories (e.g., UL, TÜV, CSA, Intertek) across all product certifications, including UL 2877 and UL 1741 SB authorization to mark.
• Own certification planning, technical review coordination, test execution oversight, and issue resolution end-to-end.
• Remain directly involved in critical certification reviews, testing activities, technical discussions, and resolution of issues with NRTLs and external test laboratories.

Oversee Functional Safety and Cybersecurity as Compliance Domains

• Ensure functional safety (IEC/UL 60730-1 Annex H and related frameworks) and cybersecurity compliance are executed to the required class/level and fully documented as components of the overall program, whether led directly or through direct reports who own these domains day to day.
• Maintain hands-on technical involvement and ownership of safety-critical firmware and controls compliance (fault handling, diagnostics, safe-shutdown, state-machine architectures) and cybersecurity documentation (secure communications, firmware integrity, access control, logging), including direct participation in technical reviews and issue resolution as needed.
• Develop internal expertise and team capabilities across functional safety and cybersecurity while continuing to provide technical leadership in these domains.

Build Compliance Infrastructure and Communicate Program Status

• Develop scalable compliance processes, traceability systems, and certification-readiness workflows that operate consistently across multiple product platforms.
• Responsible for building out internal test lab capabilities to facilitate pre-compliance testing, improve certification readiness, identify technical issues earlier in development, and reduce dependence on external testing where appropriate.
• Remain engaged with internal testing and validation activities, particularly for new products, complex compliance issues, and certification-critical testing.
• Report compliance program status, risk, and roadmap to executive leadership on a regular cadence, with clear ownership and measurable criteria.

What You'll Bring

• 10+ years of experience in product compliance, regulatory affairs, or certification leadership for electrical, power electronics, or safety-critical hardware products.
• 5+ years of people leadership experience, including direct management of compliance or engineering managers, team building, mentoring, and performance management.
• Demonstrated ability to operate as a hands-on technical leader while building and leading a compliance organization, with the ability to move between department-level strategy and detailed technical, certification, testing, and issue-resolution work as needed.
• Demonstrated ownership of UL 2877 and UL 1741 (or directly comparable primary product-safety / grid-interconnection standards) as the governing framework for a certified product line.
• Working fluency across supporting standards such as IEC/UL 60730-1, IEC 62443, UL 1998, UL 991, and IEEE 1547.1, with the judgment to know when a supporting standard changes the primary compliance strategy and when it does not.
• Exceptional leadership and communication skills: proven ability to set direction for a department, align executives and engineering leaders who don't report to you, and represent compliance credibly to customers and certification bodies.
• Track record of building compliance functions or programs from an early stage.
• Experience directing engagement with NRTLs and external certification agencies, including test planning, technical reviews, and issue resolution at a program level.
• Strong technical judgment and willingness to personally engage in complex compliance problems when needed.

Technical Skills

• Product compliance program ownership and governance across multiple standards and product lines
• UL 2877 / UL 1741 certification strategy and execution
• Hands-on functional safety and cybersecurity compliance leadership, including the ability to review technical work, guide engineering decisions, and drive issue resolution
• Regulatory management systems, traceability, and certification-readiness workflows
• NRTL and test-lab relationship management
• Hands-on certification testing, technical review, and compliance issue resolution
• Executive-level compliance reporting and risk communication

Nice to Have

• Experience with medium-voltage power conversion, solid-state transformers, or grid-interactive inverter platforms
• Experience with hyperscale data center, EV charging, or energy storage customers and their compliance expectations
• Prior experience as a Director, Head of Compliance, or equivalent functional leader in a scaling hardware startup

Working Model

This is a full-time onsite role based in the South Bay Area or Reno, NV, with in-person collaboration expected five days a week. Given the highly cross-functional nature of compliance leadership across hardware, embedded systems, and product organizations, onsite partnership is critical to enabling rapid alignment and certification execution.

Travel will be required to interface with team members in other office locations.

Why Join Amperesand

• Own compliance as a company-wide function, not a single technical workstream — with direct influence on product strategy and executive decision-making
• Build and lead the compliance department from an early stage, shaping its structure, standards, and people
• Partner directly with engineering, product, and executive leadership on next-generation power infrastructure
• High ownership, high visibility, and the mandate to define how Amperesand approaches compliance as it scales

Candidate Confidentiality & Information Protection

As part of our commitment to protecting confidential and proprietary information, candidates should not disclose or provide Amperesand with any confidential, proprietary, or trade secret information belonging to a current or former employer or any other third party during the application or interview process.

Please do not submit or present employer-owned source code, schematics, designs, technical documentation, internal presentations, customer information, prototypes, or other confidential materials. Candidates should discuss their experience and accomplishments at an appropriate level and use only information and materials they are authorized to share.

Equal Employment Opportunity 

Amperesand is an equal opportunity employer and complies with all applicable federal, state, and local fair employment practices laws. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender expression, gender identity, genetic information or characteristics, physical or mental disability, marital/domestic partner status, age, military/veteran status, medical condition, or any other characteristic protected by law. 

Amperesand is also committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities. Please let your recruiter know if you need an accommodation at any point during the interview process.