Your job is to build the machine that hunts down our hardware's weaknesses and gets that data in front of the people who can fix them. You're the hands-on end of it: test plans, fixtures, automation-and when the machine catches something, you chase it to root cause.
The Role
Given a product and its requirements, you build the test plan, build the fixture, run the campaign, and script it so the next run is faster. When a unit fails-on the bench, in a chamber, or in the field-you own it across mechanical, electrical, and firmware boundaries until it's understood and fixed.
Concretely, here are some of the things you'll work on in the first few months:
- Plan and run campaigns - Turn product requirements into concrete test plans, then execute: set up fixtures, run chambers, stress hardware to its limits, collect the data, write the report.
- Automate - Script thermal, shock, and vibration campaigns in Python against instruments and fixtures so every run is reproducible.
- Root cause analysis - Chase failures to ground: tear down failed units, isolate the cause across hardware, firmware, and mechanical, and verify the fix. What you find inside reshapes the tests.
- Accelerated life testing - Run ALT and HALT to compress years of field wear into weeks, find the design margins, and feed end-of-life data back to the design team.
- Support EVT / DVT / PVT builds - Validation bring-up during NPI, plus reliability and abuse testing-thermal cycling, vibration, ingress, drops and mishandling, long-duration burn-in.
This is an early-stage team-your fingerprints will be on every fixture, script, and test report we have.
Skills and Experience
- 2+ years of hardware validation or test - Reliability, qualification, or systems test for embedded hardware products.
- Bench skills - Fluent with oscilloscopes, multimeters, logic analyzers, and power analyzers for bring-up and debug; thermal chambers and shakers are familiar territory too.
- Fixture hands - You've built or modified test fixtures and harnesses to get a unit connected, stressed, and measured.
- Reliability and stress testing - You've run mechanical, thermal, environmental, and abuse tests and can interpret what the results mean for the design.
- Structured root cause - You debug methodically across hardware, firmware, and system boundaries-teardowns included-and you don't declare victory on a hunch.
- Python and Linux - You drive instruments, sequence test runs, and make campaigns reproducible end to end-from a shell. Our products and rigs all run Linux; SSH and logs are home turf.
- Data rigor - You treat test data statistically: distributions, margins, trends across campaigns.
- Cross-functional by default - You work daily with EE, firmware, mechanical, and manufacturing without needing a process to make it happen.
Bonus Skills
- Production test systems - End-of-line stations, pogo-pin fixtures, or test that runs at production rate.
- EMC exposure - Pre-compliance testing or supporting formal certification.
- Manufacturing test - Production-line test experience or the validation-to-manufacturing handoff.
