Product Testing and Reliability Engineer

We’re scaling our fleet of infrastructure monitoring devices to detect the real-world fault events that are increasingly causing wildfires and blackouts as the climate changes. We’ve already built and deployed thousands of our first generation products, and demand from customers is strong. As we scale to tens and hundreds of thousands of devices, we’ll need to be dramatically more reliable.

As an early team member, you’ll help us meet the challenge of getting to three and four nines of reliability we need to protect the power grid and prevent the next big blaze, and validate the performance of the 12 different sensors in our devices across a wide variety of environmental conditions.

You’ll work side-by-side with a friendly but driven team of mechanical, electrical, software, and firmware engineers and data scientists that have built technologies from satellites to novel batteries and ultra-precise cooking devices to secure OS’s and industrial-scale logistics software. As a product testing and reliability engineer at Gridware, you will be responsible for quantifying the longevity of our product and helping simulate real-world events to advance our detection capabilities.

Responsibilities

• Oversee reliability testing and analysis through the entire product lifecycle
• Develop and execute realistic environmental stress tests
• Lead and document FMEA (Failure Mode Effects Analysis) and root cause analysis
• Develop acceleration models and accelerated tests for electrical and mechanical systems
• Develop new reliability test specifications and procedures
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to implement mitigations for reliability risks
• Study and document how nature (animals, atmospheric conditions/composition, sunlight and weather) affects our products
• Build and/or procure prototype measurement equipment capable of detecting and simulating various physical quantities within a complex system
• Design and execute experiments to demonstrate proof-of-concept detection methods
• Collaborate across the organization to create short- and long-term development plans to efficiently evaluate a plethora of research concepts
• Have good common sense, hands-on practical experience and the ability to work independently without heavy supervision

To move forward in the application process, you should have:

• 5+ years experience in technical industry, especially research & development environment or product validation and verification/reliability testing
• Direct experience developing and implementing measurement systems, preferably with experience procuring and working with 3rd party devices for research purposes
• Demonstrated experience developing research plans and rapidly eliminating non-viable paths
• Good network of test labs and sources of test equipment and fabricators of custom test fixtures
• Degree in Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science, or equivalent discipline

Your application will have a higher chance of standing out, if you have one (or more) of the following skills or experiences. If you, however, have all the required skills but none of the bonus skills, we encourage you to apply.

• Some Python development experience, including statistical analysis and data science tools
• Knowledge of industry test standards including ASTM, MIL, JEDEC, and IEC
• Electromechanical background designing things with moving components
• Strong background and understanding of physics/mechanics (ex. vibrations, elastic theory, spectroscopy, electricity and magnetism background a bonus)