Powertrain Reverse Engineer

We’re ALTEN Technology USA, an engineering company helping clients bring groundbreaking ideas to life—from advancing space exploration and life-saving medical devices to building autonomous electric vehicles. With 3,000+ experts across North America, we partner with leading companies in aerospace, medical devices, robotics, automotive, commercial vehicles, EVs, rail, and more.

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Powertrain Reverse Engineer

Project Summary

We operate an autonomous-driving fleet built on the Toyota Highlander hybrid platform. The added compute load draws significantly more power than the stock hybrid system was designed to supply, causing the high-voltage battery to deplete and trigger faults that take vehicles out of service. The vehicle CAN bus has already been decoded for driving functions, but the hybrid control system — charging logic, battery state of charge, and thermal management — remains undecoded. We are looking for someone to reverse-engineer these hybrid/powertrain signals and deliver an updated DBC file so we can monitor and ultimately resolve the battery-depletion issue.

Key Responsibilities & Deliverables

• Capture and analyze CAN traffic on-vehicle (with driver/technician support)
• Reverse-engineer undecoded hybrid battery, charging, thermal, and powertrain diagnostic signals
• Produce a validated, updated DBC file and submit it as a pull request to our repo
• Re-run captured data against the new DBC to validate signal accuracy
• Document decoded signals and methodology

Must-Have Skills

• Hands-on automotive CAN bus reverse engineering experience
• DBC file authoring/editing
• Proficiency with Vector CANalyzer/CANoe (or equivalent) for trace capture and analysis
• Working knowledge of hybrid/EV powertrain and battery management systems (BMS)
• Comfortable reading raw CAN traces and isolating/decoding unknown signals
• Version control / Git pull-request workflow

Preferred / Nice-to-Have

• Direct experience with Toyota hybrid systems (THS) and Toyota diagnostics (Techstream/TIS)
• Python (or similar) for CAN data analysis
• Familiarity with AI-assisted coding tools (e.g., Cursor/Claude) — we use these to accelerate decoding
• Prior work decoding OEM "black box" control modules

Tools & Resources Provided

TIS laptop, CANalyzer, Cursor, Claude, GitHub access, scheduled vehicle time, plus VO driver, technician (TIS access), and supporting/firmware engineers.

Salary Range: $120,000-$135,000/K

The actual salary offered is dependent on various factors including, but not limited to, location, the candidate’s combination of job-related knowledge, qualifications, skills, education, training, and experience 

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment and will not be discriminated against on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, age, genetic information, or pregnancy.

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Compliance Notice: Alten USA is a federal contractor subject to the requirements of the Vietnam Era Veterans’ Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA) and Executive Order 11246. We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or veteran status.

Drug Screening Requirement: As a federal contractor, Alten USA maintains a drug-free workplace. All candidates selected for employment will be required to successfully complete a pre-employment drug screening as a condition of hire.