Director, Reliability Engineering
On-siteMenlo Park, California, United States
Job Summary
Lead the reliability engineering team responsible for mechanical stress, shock, vibration, and environmental testing of linear generators. Own the reliability roadmap and testing strategy across the product lifecycle, balancing rigor with rapid development cadence. Build, lead, and scale a team of reliability engineers while establishing scalable processes for FMEA, HALT, root-cause analysis, and CAPA. Partner with Product Engineering, R&D, and Manufacturing to influence design decisions, manage risk posture, and ensure compliance with UL, NFPA, and IEC standards. Define and track key metrics including MTBF and warranty trends to report program health to senior leadership.
Required Qualifications
- Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or related field
- 10+ years of experience in reliability, test, or quality engineering for mechanical, electrical, or electromechanical systems
- 3+ years in a formal people-management role
- Demonstrated experience building or significantly scaling a reliability, quality, or test engineering team in a hardware/manufacturing environment
- Deep, hands-on background in FMEA, HALT, root-cause analysis, and CAPA processes (RCA, 8D)
- Credibility to coach others and set standards
- Track record of influencing design and engineering decisions at the cross-functional/leadership level
- Strong communication skills
- Experience presenting reliability risk and program status to senior/executive stakeholders
- Comfortable operating in a fast-paced, evolving environment where systems, processes, and team structure are still being built
Desired Qualifications
- Experience in hardware or energy/industrial equipment manufacturing
- Experience at a company scaling from low-volume to high-volume production
- Understanding of electrical system concepts, HV/LV electronics reliability, and failure characterization techniques (X-ray, CT, cross-sectioning, optical microscopy)
- Experience with compliance testing and standards (UL, IEC, NFPA)
- Familiarity with data analysis and reliability statistics tooling (Python, MATLAB, Weibull++, JMP)
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