SolarEdge Cut 200, 140 Outside Israel. Search 'MPPT,' Not 'Solar'

If you're hiring DC power engineers for AI data centers, about 140 to 150 of the people SolarEdge is letting go sit outside Israel, and no public source says where. SolarEdge is set to cut about 200 jobs, reported as roughly 10% of its staff, and Calcalist puts only 50 to 60 of them in Israel. Some of the rest are exactly who you want. You won't find them by typing "solar" into a search bar, though, and you won't find them by skill tag either.

Where did SolarEdge's 2026 layoffs land outside Israel?

Roughly 70 to 75% of the 200 cuts, about 140 to 150 roles, are outside Israel. Neither Calcalist nor Globes says which sites they hit. Nobody has published a breakdown by site, so you have to work out the footprint yourself.

Here is what's public about SolarEdge's non-Israel presence:

• Milpitas, California. US headquarters and R&D. A Failure Analysis Engineer posting sits here.
• Austin, Texas. Contract manufacturing for SolarEdge's US production.
• Seminole, Florida. More contract manufacturing.
• South Korea. Manufacturing staff for the storage business, which closed in November 2024.

The European and Asian sites in this round are unverified. Don't tell a candidate or a hiring manager that a specific European or Asian team was cut unless you've confirmed it with someone who was there.

70-75%

Even the round count is disputed

Calcalist calls this the fifth round of layoffs in less than three years. Globes calls it the fourth since January 2024 and says Israel will see "only a few dozen" layoffs. SolarEdge's own SEC filing lists five rounds:

1. January 2024: about 900
2. July 2024: about 400
3. November 2024: about 500, from the storage business closure, mostly manufacturing staff in South Korea
4. January 2025
5. The current round: about 200

Globes probably leaves out the storage closure, which is why it counts one fewer.

The headcount math is also messy. Calcalist says SolarEdge employs about 2,000 people in Israel. If 200 is 10% of total staff, the company has about 2,000 people in total, but the 2025 headcount was 3,576. One of those numbers is stale or measured differently. Don't anchor your sizing on any single figure. If the 2,000-in-Israel figure holds, 50 to 60 cuts is only 2.5 to 3% of the Israeli workforce. That explains why the Israeli press treated this round as minor, and why the real volume sits elsewhere.

Who among the 140 is actually a converter designer?

Probably fewer than the headline implies. The non-Israel footprint leans heavily on manufacturing, and SolarEdge has every reason to protect its data-center R&D. Expect many of the US cuts to be manufacturing, quality and test staff, not the people who design DC-DC stages.

The pattern is already visible. Earlier rounds hit manufacturing hardest, including about 500 storage roles in South Korea. Outside Milpitas, the US presence is mostly contract manufacturing in Austin and Seminole.

Meanwhile SolarEdge is going after the same talent you are. On Sep 10, 2026, it said the medium-voltage to 800 VDC conversion stage of its DC powertrain for AI data centers was "now operating under load." It published an 800 VDC protection framework with NVIDIA and works with Infineon on solid-state protection. At the Open Compute Project Global Summit (Oct 12 to 15, 2026), it showed a solid-state transformer (SST) cell and a containerized data-center power model at NVIDIA's MGX showcase.

CEO Shuki Nir describes the goal as building "the full DC path from utility to rack." Coverage says the company has "shifted decisively to offense." Nobody cuts the team on offense. The DC engineers you can realistically hire are more likely to come from the residential and legacy PV product lines.

That's still a deep bench. In Q1 2026 alone, SolarEdge recognized revenue on about 50.5 thousand inverters, 2.4 million optimizers and 331 MWh of batteries for PV applications. The people behind those numbers have shipped DC conversion hardware at real volume.

Why skill tags miss SolarEdge engineers

Skill tags miss them because almost nobody fills them in. In Refolk's index, only about 0.25% of profiles with power-electronics titles carry a "DC-DC Converters" skill tag. If you filter on that tag, the market you're searching looks almost empty.

Here are the numbers from Refolk's index of professional profiles, alongside the layoff figures:

Out of 1,221 people with the title worldwide, three in the US and Israel together carry the tag. One works at SolarEdge Technologies. The 0.25% only counts the US and Israel, so it's a lower bound, but the order of magnitude won't change.

3 of 1,221

This happens because of how hardware engineers write about their work. A SolarEdge engineer doesn't think of the job as "DC-DC converters." They think "optimizer," "inverter," "MPPT" or "arc-fault detection." That language ends up in headlines and job histories, not in the skills field. Filter on structured skills and you're filtering on a field these engineers mostly left blank.

"Solar" fails for the opposite reason. It pulls in installers, sales reps, project developers and PV module people. You get a flood of results and very few converter designers.

How to source DC-DC converter engineers by circuit-level skill

Search on the circuits and protection functions they built, plus the employer name. The words that separate a power-stage designer from everyone else at a solar company are topology, device and protection terms, not the product category.

Terms that turn up the right people:

• Topologies: LLC, resonant converter
• Devices: SiC, GaN
• Protection: arc-fault detection, series arc, DC disconnection, insulation monitoring
• Control: MPPT
• Product words: optimizer, inverter
• Employer and site: SolarEdge, plus Milpitas if you want the US R&D group

The protection terms matter most for data-center work. Series arc detection, DC disconnection and insulation monitoring have been running in SolarEdge PV products for well over a decade. Those are the same functions behind the 800 VDC safety framework it published with NVIDIA. An engineer whose history mentions insulation monitoring on PV strings has already worked on the problem a rack-power team worries about at 800 V.

Writing those Boolean strings by hand, platform by platform, is slow, and each one breaks them differently. That's the gap Refolk closes. You describe the engineer in plain English, the way you'd brief a colleague, and you get back a ranked shortlist of people whose actual work history matches, whatever they put in the skills box.

Which AI data-center DC power roles actually fit them?

Rack-power and 800 VDC product roles fit SolarEdge engineers far better than facility electrical roles. The news hook pairs SolarEdge talent with ENGIE/RED and Google postings, but those postings ask for different skills than SolarEdge's core strength, which is converter and board-level design.

Google wants someone who can reason about HV-MV-LV distribution and switchgear, not a person who has tuned an LLC tank. RED's role is closer, since it's explicitly DC and explicitly AI. But it's a system-level design and modelling job, which suits a senior SolarEdge systems engineer more than a board designer. The RED posting is open until 26/11/2026. A US mirror lists USD 94,000 to 148,000 but reuses the UK text, so don't quote that range to a candidate as fact.

There's also a fair counterpoint to the transfer argument. A decade of arc detection in PV is component precedent, not data-center validation. A good candidate will say so themselves. The best pitch admits the gap and explains why your team is the place to close it.

Where else to hire power electronics engineers

Outside SolarEdge, most power-electronics engineers work at industrial conglomerates and engineering-services firms, not solar startups. In a 25-profile sample from Refolk's index, Siemens was the top employer with 6 profiles. Bengaluru was the top region with 6, followed by Nuremberg with 3.

That changes where you should look:

• Industrial conglomerates like Siemens, which led the sample
• Engineering-services firms like Cyient and L&T Technology Services
• Bengaluru and Nuremberg, the two clusters that lead the sample

The bad news for a US hiring manager is that 1,221 titled profiles worldwide is a small pool. It's split across continents, and almost none of it can be found through structured filters. So every power-stage req turns into the same slog: hand-built searches across regions to surface a handful of credible people, and the whole cycle starts again on the next req.

The SolarEdge layoffs open a short window on that pool, but don't stop at one employer. The same circuit-level search works on Siemens and on Cyient, so run it across all three at once.

How to approach SolarEdge engineers this quarter

Before you pitch anyone, confirm which team they were on and whether they designed circuits or supported production. With 140 to 150 non-Israel cuts and nothing published by site, a quick check up front saves you from pitching a test technician as an 800 VDC expert.

A workable sequence:

1. Search first, by circuit terms plus "SolarEdge." Filtering on skills or titles alone won't surface them.
2. Read the job history for verbs. "Designed," "simulated" and "validated the power stage" mean a designer. "Supported," "dispositioned" and "ran line" mean manufacturing or quality.
3. Ask which product line. Residential and legacy PV engineers are more likely to be free. Anyone on the MV-to-800 VDC powertrain probably isn't.
4. Match them to the right employer type. Point converter designers at rack-power and 800 VDC product teams. Point system engineers at roles like RED's.
5. Move before late November. RED's posting closes 26/11/2026, and SolarEdge is competing for the same DC engineers for its own data-center push.

FAQ

How many SolarEdge employees were laid off in 2026?

SolarEdge is set to cut about 200 people, reported as around 10% of staff. Calcalist reports 50 to 60 of them are in Israel, leaving roughly 140 to 150 elsewhere. The company's SEC filing lists it as the fifth round since January 2024. Globes counts four, probably because it leaves out the November 2024 storage closure.

Which SolarEdge sites outside Israel were affected?

No public source says. SolarEdge's known non-Israel footprint includes US headquarters and R&D in Milpitas, California, plus contract manufacturing in Austin, Texas and Seminole, Florida. Which US, European or Asian sites took the roughly 140 non-Israel cuts hasn't been reported, so confirm with candidates directly.

Are SolarEdge engineers a good fit for AI data-center DC power roles?

Converter and protection designers fit well with rack-power and 800 VDC product teams, since SolarEdge has run arc detection, DC disconnection and insulation monitoring in PV for well over a decade. They fit facility roles like Google's Reston Power Systems Engineer less well, because that job centers on HV-MV-LV distribution and backup power.

What search terms find DC-DC converter engineers?

Use topology, device and protection terms: LLC, resonant, SiC, GaN, MPPT, arc-fault detection and insulation monitoring, combined with an employer name. Skip "solar," which floods results with sales and installation roles. Skip skill-tag filters too. In Refolk's index, only 3 profiles in the US and Israel carry a "DC-DC Converters" tag, against 1,221 power-electronics-titled profiles worldwide.