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Reliability Engineer Verified today

Cowboy Space · Kent, WA · Production · first seen 2026-09-04
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About Cowboy Space Corporation

Cowboy Space Corporation is building infrastructure to power and connect the orbital economy. We design modular, scalable satellites in Low Earth Orbit that collect sunlight and transmit energy via infrared lasers (space-to-earth and space-to-space), power on-orbit high-performance computing clusters (GPU/TPU), and provide secure, high bandwidth optical data transport. This infrastructure will support the rapidly expanding space industrial base, ISAM operations, remote regions, and military bases.

The Role

You are our first Reliability Engineer. You will not inherit a process: you will decide what it is. You own how we reason about failure across the vehicle and the engines: where single points of failure are, which ones we accept and why, where redundancy adds value versus just adding parts and interfaces, what test data says about margin, and what we do about anomalies from testing.

You will sit with propulsion, structures, and avionics engineers rather than in a separate assurance organization.

What You'll Do

  • Decide what reliability toolkit this program runs on, write it down short enough that people follow it, and defend every inclusion and omission
  • Pick analysis depth per subsystem instead of applying one standard everywhere: some interfaces deserve a full FMECA, some deserve a one-page failure walkdown, some deserve nothing
  • Own failure analyses: FMEA/FMECA, fault trees, single-point-failure identification, common-cause assessment, and redundancy trades
  • Work the physics of failure, not just statistics: fatigue, thermal cycling, cryogenic effects, contamination, wear, and failure modes peculiar to LOX and LNG service
  • Define what each test needs to prove and get instrumentation into the plan before hardware is built
  • Run failure review and corrective action fast enough that engineers use it voluntarily
  • Build lightweight tooling: Python and version control, not an enterprise suite
  • Teach other engineers to think about failure modes before they reach you

What We're Looking For

  • 5-8 years in reliability, mission assurance, or systems engineering with real reliability ownership on hardware where failure had consequences
  • Command of core methods: FMECA, fault tree analysis, common-cause analysis, allocation, Weibull and life-data analysis
  • Judgment to right-size. You have seen reliability process applied where it did not belong and have opinions about the alternative
  • Physics-of-failure instinct: you want to know why the part broke, not just how often parts like it break
  • Hands-on test experience. You have stood next to hardware, watched it misbehave, and worked anomalies to root cause
  • Python sufficient to run Monte Carlos, fit life data, and build tools your teammates use without your help
  • Statistical honesty about small samples. When a number rests on four data points and an assumed distribution, you say so instead of quoting three significant figures
  • Willingness to make a call on incomplete information, state the assumptions, and revise
  • Bachelor's degree in engineering or similar

Nice to Have

  • Launch vehicle or liquid rocket engine experience, especially cryogenic
  • Rotating machinery reliability: turbopumps, bearings, seals, dynamic environments
  • Propulsion or structural test experience, including instrumentation planning and data reduction
  • Experience standing up a reliability function from nothing
  • Probabilistic risk assessment or structural reliability background
  • Supplier quality or nonconformance experience, and composure for a hard vendor conversation
  • Reusable vehicle experience: inspection, refurbishment, reliability across flights of the same article

Compensation and Benefits

  • Salary: $140,000 - $185,000 annually
  • Equity in Cowboy Space Corp.
  • Medical, dental, and vision insurance
  • 401(k) retirement savings plan
  • Paid time off
  • 10 paid holidays per calendar year
  • Paid parental leave
  • Relocation assistance if applicable
  • Daily lunch in the office and fully stocked kitchen

ITAR Requirements

To conform to U.S. Government space technology export regulations, including the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), applicants must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3), or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.