About the roleForterra is looking for a hands-on Electrical Engineer to join the Core Product team in Clarksburg, MD. You will be working with a small team of engineers to test and help develop automated tests for autonomous systems for military and commercial vehicles
What you'll doHardware Test & Automation:
- Design and implement hardware validation strategies for boards and subsystems used in autonomous vehicle platforms.
- Develop automated hardware test systems for engineering validation, regression testing, and manufacturing screening.
- Design and build custom test fixtures, harnesses, and interface boards to support board-level and subsystem testing.
- Develop automated test scripts and frameworks to exercise hardware interfaces such as Ethernet, CAN, SPI, I2C, and power systems.
- Collaborate with firmware and software teams to integrate automated test infrastructure into development and CI workflows.
- Define test plans, test coverage, and validation methodologies across prototype, EVT/DVT, and production phases.
- Implement data collection and analysis frameworks to monitor performance, reliability, and regression trends.
- Support manufacturing teams with production test strategies and bring-up procedures.
Electrical Design & Debug:
- Design and develop digital and analog circuits for embedded systems, networking hardware, and power subsystems.
- Perform schematic capture and collaborate with PCB layout engineers during board implementation.
- Lead board bring-up and hardware debugging using lab instrumentation including oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and power analyzers.
- Perform root cause analysis of hardware issues discovered during validation and field testing.
- Support prototype builds and drive hardware validation through the development of lifecycle.
- Generate clear technical documentation, including schematics, test plans, validation reports, and debugging notes.
- Test Hardware & Fixture Development Design test interface boards, harnesses, and hardware fixtures to enable efficient validation and production testing.
- Develop bed-of-nails fixtures, debug adapters, and instrumentation interfaces where required.
- Collaborate with mechanical and manufacturing teams to ensure test fixtures are robust, repeatable and scalable.
- Ensure test infrastructure supports high coverage, repeatability, and efficient troubleshooting.
- ECAD & Design Infrastructure Develop, maintain, and release high-quality schematics and PCB designs using Altium Designer (or equivalent).
- Review PCB designs for signal integrity, power integrity, grounding, and testability (DFT).
- Contribute to design-for-test (DFT) practices that improve validation and production screening.
- Collaborate with manufacturing and PLM teams to ensure accurate design releases.
Minimum Qualifications- Strong experience in hardware validation and automated test development.
- Hands-on experience designing test fixtures, hardware test adapters, or validation systems.
- Deep familiarity with hardware debugging and lab instrumentation.
- Strong understanding of design-for-test and validation methodologies.
- Ability to work across hardware, firmware, and manufacturing teams to build scalable test infrastructure.
- Basic Knowledge of networking configurations and protocols.
- Strong problem-solving skills and ability to debug complex mixed hardware/software issues.
Preferred Qualifications- Experience developing automated hardware test systems using Python, Boundary Scan, or similar frameworks.
- Experience designing test fixtures, bed-of-nails systems, or hardware interface boards.
- Experience with automotive, defense, or high-reliability hardware systems.
- Familiarity with networking hardware, embedded systems, or robotics platforms.
- Exposure to signal integrity or power integrity analysis.
- Familiarity with ISO 26262, MIL-STD, or other reliability standards.
US Salary Range
$90,000 - $130,000
Location
Hybrid in Clarksburg, MD
The salary range for this role is an estimate and is based on a wide variety of compensation factors. The salary offered to candidates will vary based on a variety of factors including (but not limited to) relevant work experience, education, specialized training, critical expertise, training, and more. Equity in Forterra is included in most of our full-time, high-demand roles and is therefore considered part of Forterra's overall compensation package. In addition to base salary and equity, Forterra offers competitive benefits for full-time employees including:
- Premium Healthcare Benefits: Three plan options, including an HSA-eligible plan, with Forterra covering 80% of the plan premium for you and your dependents.
- Basic Life/AD&D, short and long-term disability insurance plans 100% covered by Forterra, plus the option to purchase additional life insurance for you and your dependents.
- Extremely generous company holiday calendar including a winter break in December.
- Competitive paid time off (PTO) offering 20 days accrued per year.
- A minimum of 7 weeks fully paid parental leave for birth/adoption.
- A $9k annual tuition reimbursement or professional development stipend.
- Fully stocked beverage refrigerators with all the Celsius your little heart desires.
- 401(k) retirement savings plan, including traditional, Roth 401(k), and after-tax deferral with company match up to 4%.
Your recruiter will be able to share more information about our salary and benefits offering during the hiring process.
CLEARANCE ELIGIBILITY - This position may require eligibility to obtain and maintain a U.S. security clearance. For more information about U.S. Security Clearances: click here.
