Validation Engineering Manager
Your Role at Pura:
The Validation Engineering Manager is responsible for leading the validation engineering team while remaining hands-on in product validation activities to ensure products and systems meet all necessary requirements before release. This role involves planning, coordinating, and executing validation strategies and procedures while directly contributing to test development, troubleshooting, and execution. This is an onsite role based in our office/lab environment to support close collaboration with cross-functional teams and physical product testing.
What You'll Own:
- Validation Strategy: Develop and implement comprehensive validation strategies while actively participating in test planning, execution, data review, and issue resolution for IoT devices, including functional, performance, security, battery, mechanical durability, environmental, reliability, and compliance testing.
- Hands-on Technical Contribution: Personally support test execution, debug product issues, review validation data, and develop test methods for complex or high-priority programs.
- Leadership: Lead and manage a multidisciplinary team of validation engineers while serving as a technical contributor on critical validation efforts when needed. Provide guidance, mentorship, and conduct performance evaluations.
- Culture: Foster a collaborative and innovative team environment.
- Team Management: Efficiently allocate resources to meet project deadlines and ensure the team has clear goals and accountability.
- Cross-functional Collaboration: Work closely with design, product development, firmware, hardware, security, quality and manufacturing teams, both in the lab and during development builds, to ensure comprehensive validation coverage.
- Continuous Improvement: Drive continuous improvement initiatives within the validation team. Familiarity with methodologies such as Lean, Six Sigma, or other process improvement techniques.
- Project Management: Plan and oversee validation activities, ensuring that all tasks are completed on time and within budget while managing multiple concurrent projects.
- Communication: Ensure that communication channels stay open among all product development teams
- Culture of refinement: Drive continuous improvement initiatives within the validation team to enhance efficiency, effectiveness, and compliance.
Qualifications:
- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Engineering, Science, or a related field.
- Minimum of 7+ years of experience in validation engineering, with at least 3+ years in a managerial or leadership role.
- This role requires regular onsite presence to support laboratory testing, prototype builds, and close collaboration with cross-functional engineering teams.
- Proven leadership experience in leading product validation teams and multidisciplinary engineers (electrical, firmware, mechanical, and compliance).
- Proven leadership and team management skills, including performance evaluations, mentoring, and guidance.
- Strong project management skills, with the ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously.
- Strong understanding of validation methodologies, test automation, and testing frameworks.
- Expertise in testing electromechanical devices, including vibration, drop, and shock assessments to ensure reliability standards, as well as temperature, humidity, and corrosion tests to validate performance under extreme conditions.
- Expertise in testing Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, networking, and cloud connectivity for IoT devices, including over-the-air (OTA) firmware updates, ensuring robust and secure update mechanisms are thoroughly tested and validated across all devices.
- Knowledge of battery validation and testing techniques, including assessing battery life, battery safety, and battery efficiency in different scenarios.
- Expertise in compliance testing and ensuring products meet regulatory requirements (e.g., FCC, CE, UL).
- Strong analytical and problem-solving abilities.
- Professional certification in validation engineering (e.g., Certified Quality Engineer, Certified Process Validation Professional).
- Experience with Lean, Six Sigma, or other continuous improvement methodologies.
- Familiarity with risk management tools and techniques, particularly as they apply to product validation.
- Hands-on experience with automated test frameworks, scripting languages, and tools such as Python, Jenkins, or similar.
- Familiarity with Agile or Scrum development methodologies.
