Sr. Reliability Engineer

Location: Mountain View/San Jose Bay Area

Team: System Engineering

The Impact You’ll Make:

We are seeking an experienced Senior Reliability Engineer to define and lead the reliability strategy for next-generation renewable energy products, including utility-scale photovoltaic systems, battery energy storage systems (BESS), power conversion systems (PCS), high-voltage power electronics, intelligent energy management systems, and supporting infrastructure. This individual will own reliability engineering from architecture through field deployment, ensuring products meet aggressive performance, availability, warranty, and 20+ year lifetime objectives.

The successful candidate will partner with Hardware, Firmware, Systems, Validation, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Product Management, and Field Service teams to proactively eliminate failure mechanisms, develop accelerated qualification plans, improve product robustness, and drive continuous reliability growth using data-driven engineering practices.

Key Responsibilities:

Reliability Strategy & Product Development

Own the reliability strategy across the complete product lifecycle.
Define quantitative reliability requirements, availability targets and warranty objectives.
Develop mission profiles representing utility-scale solar, BESS, microgrid and data-center applications.
Lead reliability design reviews and reliability sign-off before production.

Reliability Engineering & Modeling

Weibull analysis, MTBF/MTTF, Reliability Block Diagrams (RBD), Fault Tree Analysis (FTA).
Physics of Failure (PoF), stress-strength analysis, derating, reliability growth modeling.
Predict product lifetime using analytical and field data.

Accelerated Life Testing

Develop HALT, HASS and ALT programs.
Plan thermal cycling, power cycling, humidity, thermal shock, vibration, shock, salt fog, UV, ingress protection and endurance testing.
Correlate accelerated testing to expected field life.

Power Electronics & Energy Systems

Lead reliability for PV inverters, PCS, DC/DC converters, battery systems, SiC MOSFETs, IGBTs, capacitors, magnetics, busbars, contactors, sensors and cooling systems.
Evaluate electrical, thermal and mechanical failure mechanisms.

Failure Analysis

Lead structured root cause investigations using 8D, Fishbone, 5-Why and FTA.
Coordinate SEM, EDS, X-ray, CT scanning, cross-sectioning and thermal imaging.
Drive corrective/preventive actions and verify effectiveness.

Validation & Qualification

Create DVP&R and reliability qualification plans.
Review supplier qualification and production validation.

Field Reliability & Analytics

Analyze warranty, fleet, manufacturing and field-return data.
Develop reliability dashboards and KPIs.
Identify trends and prioritize design improvements.

Cross-Functional Leadership

Mentor junior engineers.
Interface with customers, suppliers and certification agencies.
Influence design decisions using reliability data.

The Skills You Bring

BS or MS in Electrical, Mechanical, Reliability Engineering or related discipline.
8+ years in reliability engineering for renewable energy, power electronics, industrial power systems or electrification.
Experience with accelerated life testing, statistical reliability and failure analysis.
Experience with DFMEA, PFMEA, DRBFM and root cause methodologies.
Strong communication and technical leadership.

Nice to Have

ASQ Certified Reliability Engineer (CRE).
Six Sigma Green/Black Belt.
Utility-scale solar or BESS experience.
Knowledge of SiC-based power electronics.
Experience with ReliaSoft Weibull++, JMP, Minitab, MATLAB or Python.

About the Tech Stack

Standards: UL 1741, UL 62109, UL 9540, UL 9540A, IEEE 1547, IEC 62477, IEC 60068, IEC 62093.
Test equipment: power analyzers, oscilloscopes, thermal chambers, vibration systems, environmental chambers, DAQ.
Design tools: MATLAB, Python, JMP, Minitab, Weibull++, Altium (preferred).

Benefits and Perks

Competitive Compensation Package

Health Insurance: We offer 100% coverage of employee premiums under a Gold-level PPO plan. Dental & Vision Insurance: 50% of employee premiums are covered.