What You'll Do
Translate design requirements, mission profiles, and industry standards into environmental test plans, including stress profiles, sample sizes, verification matrices, instrumentation maps, and pass/fail criteria.
Write and maintain the test procedures and work instructions technicians use to set up, execute, and tear down tests.
Design test fixtures in CAD and verify they are dynamically suitable for vibration and shock testing.
Define instrumentation and data acquisition requirements, and develop automated tools for data acquisition, reduction, and plotting.
Provide real-time engineering support during test execution: review live data, disposition anomalies and test interruptions, and authorize profile changes or test stops.
Lead investigations of test failures and anomalies, partnering with failure analysis and design engineers to drive root cause and corrective action.
Analyze test data and author test reports that support disposition, qualification, and acceptance decisions.
Plan and prioritize the test schedule across concurrent campaigns, balancing program needs against lab capacity.
Define lab capability needs, including equipment, test methods, and capacity, and manage external laboratories when testing exceeds in-house capability.
- Educate stakeholders on environmental test best practices to improve test plans and design-for-test practices.
- Required Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Physics, Mechanical Engineering, Reliability Engineering, or related field.
2+ years of experience planning and conducting environmental tests, including temperature cycling, vibration, shock, highly accelerated limit testing (HALT), and highly accelerated stress screening (HASS).
Experience writing test plans, procedures, and reports for hardware qualification or acceptance.
Working knowledge of relevant industry test standards, including MIL-STD-810, RTCA DO-160, IPC, JEDEC, and ASTM.
Knowledge of electronics failure mechanisms, including solder fatigue, intermetallic growth, conductive anodic filaments, tin whiskers, electromigration, and corrosion, and how environmental stresses accelerate them.
Proficiency in CAD modelling software, including ANSYS SpaceClaim, NX, or Solidworks.
Experience specifying instrumentation and data acquisition (thermocouples, accelerometers, humidity sensors, strain gauges) and analyzing the resulting data.
Self-starter with a growth mindset and sound judgment when making real-time decisions with incomplete information.
- Clear, concise written and oral communication, including the ability to present results and recommendations to design and hardware test teams.
- Preferred Qualifications
- 5+ years of experience in a reliability or environmental test engineering role.
Familiarity with reliability concepts, including Weibull statistics, accelerated life test design, and acceleration models (e.g., Coffin-Manson, Arrhenius, Peck).
Master's degree in Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or Reliability Engineering.
Proficiency in FEA modelling software, including ANSYS Mechanical, Siemens Simcenter, or Abaqus, including modal analysis of test fixtures.
Proficiency in Python, including NumPy, Pandas, SciPy, Plotly, and Matplotlib, for data reduction and test automation.
Experience leading interdisciplinary technical projects from concept to production.
Experience standing up a new environmental test capability.
Familiarity with PCB fabrication, SMT, and polymerics application manufacturing processes.
