Design for Test (DFT) Engineer

Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories•Boise, ID

2d•Onsite

About The Position

We are hiring experienced Design for Test (DFT) Engineers in Boise, ID. You will be embedded with our R&D product design engineers, shaping how our next generation of products is built so manufacturability and testability are built in from the start. This role is about supporting Manufacturing; you are Manufacturing's advocate inside product design, ensuring every product is designed to be tested and built reliably at scale. It is a role for engineers who have experience building and testing products and can partner closely with the design team and the manufacturing team. Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories exists to make electric power safer, more reliable, and more economical. Our devices must respond to system faults within milliseconds—to ensure safety, avoid damage, and minimize outages. Hundreds of utilities and millions of industrial, commercial, and residential consumers depend on SEL products every day. Testability is not something you bolt on at the end—it is designed in. The best test coverage, the fastest fault isolation, and the smoothest ramp to production all start with decisions made during product design. As a DFT Engineer, you are the voice of test inside the design team, and that voice carries weight only when it is backed by experience. You will draw on a career of hands-on test and design work to ensure quality and manufacturability are considered from concept through release.

Requirements

B.S. in Electrical Engineering, Electronics Engineering Technology, or equivalent
Several years of hands-on experience in electronics test development, board-level design, or a closely related discipline
Deep understanding of analog and digital electronics, schematics, and board-level design
Influenced design decisions before and can carry an argument on technical merit with people who own the design
Can hold both perspectives—what the designer needs and what the factory needs—and find solutions that serve both
Care about quality and build it in from the start rather than inspect it in at the end

Nice To Haves

Direct experience with DFT practices, test coverage analysis, or design-for-manufacturability in electronics
Hands-on experience with boundary scan/JTAG, built-in self-test, or in-circuit test (ICT) and functional test development
Worked with flying probe, bed-of-nails, or functional test systems and understand what makes a board easy—or hard—to test
Knowledge of power systems protection products
Exposure to programming (Python, C, or similar)
Background in firmware development for embedded test or self-test applications

Responsibilities

Partner with R&D product design engineers throughout the design cycle, providing Design for Test guidance from concept through release to manufacturing
Review schematics, board layouts, and architectures to ensure test access, coverage, and fault isolation—test points, boundary scan/JTAG, built-in self-test, and diagnostic strategies
Develop and maintain DFT guidelines, standards, and design-rule checklists, and help design teams adopt them
Model and estimate test coverage early, identifying gaps before a board is ever fabricated
Serve as the bridge between R&D and our manufacturing test engineering teams, ensuring designs transition smoothly into production test systems
Collaborate on test strategy and requirements so that flying probe, bed-of-nails / in-circuit test (ICT), and functional test systems can be built efficiently for each new product
Assist with developing flying probe and bed-of-nails in-circuit test (ICT) programs for our SPEA 4080 and Keysight i3070 systems
Analyze field and production test data to close the loop—feeding lessons learned back into design practices and DFT standards
Evaluate and champion emerging DFT methods, tools, and technologies across the engineering organization