Sr Staff Systems Reliability Engineer at Illumina Inc in San Diego, CA

Position Overview:

The Sr Staff Systems Reliability Engineer develops and leads the implementation of the Illumina Reliability Program across all functional product development teams to develop industry-leading DNA sequencing platforms for clinical applications in an exciting, fast-paced environment. This responsibility includes both instrument and consumables reliability engineering.

The foundation for this role is a wide, solid grasp of reliability engineering, engineering physics, and the ability to climb new learning curves quickly. Primary responsibilities include reliability program development, development of reliability models/budgets, contributing design for reliability to system & sub-system architecture designs, and developing test strategies for critical parameter, reliability, and verification testing.

The candidate should possess broad technical and communication skills enabling reliability program leadership spanning hardware, consumables, firmware, software, and chemistry in close partnership with the Illumina product development team. The role requires design for reliability leadership in all the areas above and the ability to drive reliable technologies and architectures into a product roadmap.

Requirements:

• Lead the development, training, and implementation of the Illumina Reliability Program
• Develop, manage, and execute design for reliability activities to identify design improvements sensitivities, intended operating environments and failure processes in partnership with the global Illumina product development team
• Support design teams in the definition and implementation of highly accelerated life testing (HALT) and accelerated life testing.
• Lead teams to resolution of complex multi-disciplinary reliability challenges through root-cause and failure analysis activities. This includes optical, mechanical, electrical, fluidic, or thermal components and modules, as well as system-level interactions.
• Develop system reliability models that guide design decisions and system architecture definitions
• Support analysis, simulation and test efforts informing Design for Reliability and robustness.
• Supporting teams in the application of quality and reliability statistical tools and the analysis of fleet reliability with knowledge of mean cumulative function techniques
• Lead development teams in understanding field failure modes, prioritization and provide guidance on investments in reliability improvements in fielded and future systems

Required Skills & Experience:

• Typically requires a minimum of 12 years of related experience with a Bachelor's degree; or 8 years and a Master's degree; or a PhD with 5 years experience; or equivalent experience
• Strong analytical background, statistical analysis fundamentals and proven record of using these results to drive decisions.
• Demonstrated track record of rapidly climbing steep learning curves in challenging product developments. Enthusiasm for tackling tough problems on aggressive schedules.
• Strong teamwork, communication, and presentation skills (ability to distill complex reliability engineering concepts into technical recommendations and team training materials)
• Experience in Reliability Engineering definition, setup, characterization and testing of complex systems, including design of experiments, reliability life tests, and root cause / physics of failure analysis.

Preferred Skills & Experience:

• M.S. or Ph.D. in Reliability Engineering or Mechanical Engineering
• Experience in complex instrumentation design and development
• Experience with Monte Carlo and reliability simulation software.
• Experience with mean cumulative function reliability analysis techniques
• Specific experience with product development for laboratory instrumentation for biological analysis.
• Understanding of health monitoring and electronic prognostics principles.