Lead Hardware Reliability Engineer (Starshield) Verified today
About Starshield
Starshield leverages SpaceX's Starlink technology and launch capability to support national security efforts. Starshield is designed for government use, with an initial focus on earth observation, communications, and hosted payloads.
The Role
You will build and lead a hardware reliability team for Starshield production. You will identify, analyze, and resolve hardware and process failures to improve the robustness, yield, and documentation of Starshield subassemblies. This role spans PCBA production, battery builds, solar arrays, tanks, and mechanical assemblies such as actuators, reaction wheels, torque rods, and star trackers. You will partner with manufacturing, design, quality, and supply chain teams to strengthen build processes, raise first-pass yield, and lead containment when hardware or process issues put production at risk.
Responsibilities
- Lead and hire a team of hardware reliability engineers supporting Starshield production
- Provide technical mentorship and guidance to team members leading root cause investigations of subassembly and process failures
- Align goals and priorities with production and partner engineering teams to achieve program reliability, yield, and rate objectives
- Collaborate with team members to create personalized career growth plans that build their technical capabilities and accelerate progress toward their professional goals
- Drive improvements to products and processes that are not meeting design or production requirements through data-driven decisions, using yield and defect monitoring to identify common failure modes
- Lead containment activities for nonconforming hardware, including isolation of suspect product, impact assessment, and coordination of disposition and recovery
- Improve build processes, work instructions, and production documentation to reduce defects and increase first-pass yield across assigned subassemblies
- Lead qualification of production processes for assigned subassemblies, establishing process readiness before rate production
- Lead PFMEA reviews with manufacturing and design partners to identify process risks, prioritize controls, and drive risk reduction
- Proactively escalate major hardware and process concerns, secure appropriate resources, and maintain clear communication to drive timely resolution and team alignment
- Maintain thorough documentation of failure analysis findings, process investigations, test results, and corrective actions
- Collaborate with the on-orbit reliability team, driving timely improvements to production through on-orbit investigation findings
Basic Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, chemical engineering, process engineering, materials science, or other engineering discipline
- 3+ years of experience in hardware development, manufacturing process engineering, failure analysis, or reliability engineering
- 1+ years of experience leading a project, team, or people
Preferred Skills and Experience
- Strong analytical skills with an excellent ability to communicate and collaborate with partners in all disciplines at multiple levels in the organization
- Demonstrated ability to advocate for and implement robust solutions that stand the test of time
- Experience deploying large-scale and/or high-impact solutions in a manufacturing environment
- Experience improving manufacturing processes, work instructions, and production documentation to increase yield and reduce defects
- Experience leading containment, material review, or nonconformance response for production hardware