Hardware Quality & Reliability Engineer – Production

Tutor Intelligence•Watertown, MA

3d•Onsite

About The Position

Tutor is hiring its first quality and reliability engineer dedicated to production hardware. The role builds the quality and reliability function from the ground up and reports to the Head of Manufacturing. The engineer has authority to hold any robot that does not meet quality requirements. The initial priority is returned material, including containment, Material Review Board (MRB) operations, failure analysis, and supplier RMAs; incoming and shipping quality gates follow. The role involves up to 25% travel to customer sites and suppliers and is onsite in Watertown, Massachusetts. The engineer owns investigations into returned parts and field failures across robot arms, control boxes, PCBAs, drives, power systems, sensors, and harnesses. They direct technicians during teardowns and bench tests, determine root causes, and verify corrective fixes. They build and operate a failure reporting, analysis, and corrective action system (FRACAS), using AI tools on top of manufacturing execution systems (MES), field tickets, and robot telemetry. They track failures by component, supplier, and serial number; establish reliability targets for critical subsystems; and provide regular data-based quality reporting to Engineering, Manufacturing, Deployment, and Customer Success. The role also manages technical supplier RMAs, failure data, supplier root-cause requests, SCARs, and corrective actions. The engineer defines incoming-part and finished-robot pass/fail criteria, makes ship-or-hold decisions, qualifies new and refurbished parts and supplier changes, and verifies that tests catch known failures. Production Engineering builds tests when needed. Success means establishing ownership and root-cause paths for returned parts, operating a data-driven weekly MRB and live failure dashboard, reducing repeat failures and field escapes, and automating incoming and shipping gates.

Requirements

Personally driven production or field failures on electromechanical hardware—such as robots, automation, vehicles, or industrial equipment—to a verified root cause and corrective action.
At least 4 years of experience in quality, reliability, test, or hardware engineering.
Bachelor’s degree in Electrical, Mechanical, or Computer Engineering, or a related field.
Experience working directly with suppliers on RMAs and corrective actions.
Experience building tools with AI, such as scripts, dashboards, or automated checks, that other people used; candidates should be prepared to describe one.
Ability to use Python or SQL to analyze failure data and draw clear conclusions.
Ability to travel up to 25%.

Nice To Haves

Robotics, industrial automation, or hardware startup experience.
Hands-on electrical debugging of motor drives, power, and communication faults.
Failure analysis experience with robot arms, servo motors, or gearboxes.
Reliability engineering experience, including life testing, HALT/HASS, Weibull analysis, and MTBF analysis.
Experience with MES and serial-number traceability systems.
ASQ CQE or CRE certification.

Responsibilities

Contain failures, quarantine suspect stock, and identify potentially affected robots in the factory and field.
Run the weekly Material Review Board, including disposition decisions, root-cause-analysis ownership, and corrective actions through closure.
Own failure analysis for returned parts and field failures, including robot arms, control boxes, PCBAs, drives, power systems, sensors, and harnesses.
Direct technicians during teardowns and bench tests, determine root causes, and verify that fixes work.
Build and operate a FRACAS using AI tools and data from MES, field tickets, and robot telemetry.
Track failures by component, supplier, and serial number, including repeat failures and escapes.
Set reliability targets such as MTBF and failure rate for critical subsystems, and track factory and fleet performance.
Provide regular data-based quality reporting to Engineering, Manufacturing, Deployment, and Customer Success, and feed findings into design reviews.
Serve as the technical point of contact with suppliers for RMAs; share failure data and analysis, request supplier root causes, issue SCARs, and pursue corrective actions, credits, and replacements.
Set pass/fail criteria for incoming parts and finished robots and make ship-or-hold decisions.
Define testing needed to address gaps exposed by failures and verify that the tests detect those failures.
Qualify new parts, refurbished parts, and supplier changes before they reach the production line.
Travel to customer sites and suppliers as needed, up to 25%.