Director of Test Engineering

Specter•San Francisco, CA

About The Position

Specter's mission is to help automate the physical world. Today, we build video sensors with state-of-the-art AI agents that answer any question, anywhere in their environments. Our systems can automatically detect and reason about any physical activity captured on camera, from security incidents (e.g. perimeter intrusion, theft, LPR), to safety monitoring (e.g. PPE detection, injured people), to operational efficiency (e.g. material tracking, congestion monitoring). We offer both long range wireless (1km range) and wired sensor variants to suit any deployment. Our co-founders Xerxes and Philip are passionate about empowering our partners in the fast approaching world of physical AI and robotics. We are a small, fast growing team who hail from Anduril, Tesla, Uber, and the U.S. Special Forces.

Requirements

7+ years of hardware validation, reliability, or systems test engineering experience on embedded or ruggedized hardware products
Proven ability to own a test program end-to-end — plan, setup, execution, analysis, and design feedback — without requiring a team beneath you
Deep hands-on expertise in thermal, mechanical, and environmental testing; you can design a test fixture, run the chamber, and interpret the data yourself
Strong background in structured failure analysis and root cause investigation across hardware, firmware, and system-level failures
Experience with degradation modeling and accelerated life testing (thermal cycling, vibration, humidity, burn-in, HALT/HASS)
Experience defining validation plans and acceptance criteria cross-functionally with EE, ME, firmware, and manufacturing teams
Comfortable specifying and procuring lab equipment and standing up lab infrastructure from scratch

Nice To Haves

Familiarity with relevant standards: IEC 60529 (IP ratings), UN38.3, ASTM D5470, IEC 60068, or equivalent
Experience developing automated validation systems or manufacturing EOL test infrastructure
Background in outdoor/ruggedized hardware, IoT, autonomous systems, or defense-adjacent products
Experience with solar, battery, or alternative energy system validation
Prior experience building and leading a small test engineering team
Proficiency in Python for test automation and data analysis; familiarity with C, C++, or Rust for embedded/firmware-level debugging
Networking fundamentals — TCP/IP, protocols, and experience working with networked embedded devices
Comfort with software tooling: Git and version control workflows, CI/CD or other deployment pipelines, and cloud infrastructure basics (AWS, GCP, or Azure) for data logging, remote monitoring, or test infrastructure

Responsibilities

Personally design and execute thermal, mechanical, environmental, ingress, and reliability tests across our sensor and compute hardware portfolio.
Build degradation models and define accelerated life test plans targeting a 10-year outdoor service life for ruggedized, field-deployed products.
Perform hardware bring-up, characterization, and stress testing to identify system limits.
Drive failure analysis and root cause investigations across hardware, firmware, and system-level failures.
Analyze test results and translate findings into actionable design feedback for EE, ME, and firmware teams.
Own the hardware requirements → test → design change feedback loop across all Specter products.
Define and institutionalize a standardized validation and qualification process (DV, PV, EOL) that every product passes through.
Establish test gates, pass/fail criteria, documentation standards, and sign-off ownership company-wide.
Support EVT/DVT/PVT builds and NPI validation bring-up across multiple concurrent programs.
Design and stand up an in-house lab capable of environmental, ingress, mechanical, power, and reliability testing.
Specify and procure key equipment: thermal chambers, vibration/shock rigs, ingress fixtures, power instrumentation, and data acquisition systems.
Define lab workflows, safety procedures, calibration schedules, and data capture standards.
Define the testing and reliability org structure and near-term hiring roadmap.
Mentor and scale engineers and technicians as testing volume grows.
Serve as the cross-functional technical owner across EE, ME, firmware, manufacturing, and ops.
Own validation across our full hardware portfolio, including: Enclosures & ingress — IP66/IP-rated enclosure testing for outdoor sensor and gateway products, injection-molded housing assemblies, and antenna systems
Thermal — validation across high ambient, low temperature, and high-humidity conditions; characterization of compute and power subsystems under real and simulated edge inference workloads
Shock & vibration — transportation, handling robustness, and structural validation including wind load characterization for deployable hardware
Reliability & accelerated life — PCBA environmental exposure, camera sensor moisture and corrosion effects, degradation modeling for 10-year outdoor service life
Power & energy — solar module performance characterization; qualification and reliability testing of alternative battery chemistries; shipping compliance testing as needed
Manufacturing & EOL — leak-down testing for production line QC; EOL test definition targeting high-risk failure modes identified during DV/PV