Senior Hardware Reliability & Test Engineer

Atoms builds Physical AI— real-world robots for the industries that move civilization forward, starting with food, mining, and transport. Our systems are designed to understand, predict, and control the real world with precision, turning complex physical operations into something more reliable, more scalable, and more productive.

We are roboticists, engineers, operators, and builders. We believe the next great technology companies will not only transform information, but the physical systems that shape everyday life.

About the role

Atoms is seeking a Senior Hardware Reliability & Environmental Test Engineer to set the hardware qualification standard and own reliability and environmental testing across our platforms. The role covers the qualification standard itself, reliability requirements and budgets, the design verification plan, environmental and accelerated life testing, and analysis that turns test and field data into design and test changes.

What you’ll do

• Define hardware qualification standards, including environmental requirements, test methods, and acceptance criteria.
• Define reliability and availability requirements for hardware systems and subsystems.
• Own the design verification plan and report, covering thermal cycling, shock, humidity, vibration, dust and water ingress, corrosion, altitude and fluid resistance.
• Collect and analyze field load data, and derive mission profiles and accelerated test profiles from measured operating conditions.
• Own the environmental test equipment plan and its justification. Specify, commission and maintain equipment, fixturing, instrumentation and calibration records, and determine which testing runs internally and which is run with external labs.
• Own external test lab relationships.
• Plan and execute HALT for design margin and accelerated life testing for life estimation.
• Lead DFMEA, fault tree analysis and reliability block diagram activities and track the resulting actions into the verification plan.
• Analyze field failures and returned hardware, drive root cause and corrective action, and revise test requirements based on the results.
• Set the reliability acceptance criteria suppliers are held to, review and challenge supplier qualification data, and specify additional testing where application conditions are not covered.

What we’re looking for

• Bachelor's degree in mechanical, electrical, materials or a related engineering field. Equivalent hands-on experience will be considered in place of the degree.
• Deployed fleet experience in autonomous vehicles, EV, or robotics.
• 10+ years in hardware reliability, environmental test or design validation on electromechanical and electronic hardware.
• Ownership of environmental and accelerated life test programs end to end across multiple products or programs, including test plan development, level and duration selection, execution and reporting.
• Experience defining a reliability or qualification standard applied by more than one team, and driving adoption across teams outside your reporting line.
• Working knowledge of test methods, with the ability to tailor test requirements to an application.
• Experience deriving test profiles from measured field data, including instrumentation, data acquisition and post-processing.
• Proficiency in DFMEA, fault tree analysis, reliability block diagrams, reliability growth and Weibull analysis.
• Ability to work onsite five days a week in San Francisco, with travel to production and field sites.

What else you need to know

This role is based in our San Francisco office. Atoms is a company driven by invention and continuous change - we are constantly reimagining our industries, building new products, and refining how we operate. We do our best work together. That’s why all of our office-based teams work onsite, five days a week.

The base salary range for this role is $182,000 - $238,000 per year.

Base salary is just one part of your total rewards package. You may also be eligible for equity awards.

Benefits Summary (USA Full-Time Exempt Employees):

• Medical, Dental, Vision, Disability, and Life Insurance
• Flexible Spending Account / Health Savings Account Options
• 401(k)
• Equity
• Sick Time, Unlimited Flexible Time Off, and Paid Holidays
• Paid Parental Leave
• Pre-Tax Commuter Benefit Plan
• Team lunch in our SoMa office every Tuesday and Thursday

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