Hardware Test & Reliability Engineer

Heron Power•Scotts Valley, CA

5h•$130,000 - $200,000

About The Position

Heron Power is a startup company building cutting-edge power electronics for the 21st-century grid. We aim to de-bottleneck the growth of electricity generation and consumption with scalable, innovative, and less costly hardware solutions, accelerating the electrification of everything. Our first goal is to build better converters (inverters & rectifiers) to connect large-scale renewables, storage, and loads to the grid. Heron’s leadership team is made up of seasoned veterans who have designed and shipped gigawatts of power conversion products over the past decade. We understand that no one individual knows everything. We will all learn a lot together and from each other. We strive to build a collaborative, enriching environment conducive to personal, technical, and career growth. You can expect to work in a dynamic environment, driven by first principles engineering, solving difficult problems—with a strong bias toward hands-on execution and learning by doing. Job Overview Uptime, availability, and reliability are critical to our converters (inverters & rectifiers) that connect large-scale renewables, storage, and high-power loads (e.g., data centers) to the grid. Our team focuses on delivering a deep, physics-based understanding of our systems from architecture to field, enabling designs that are reliable, safe, and high performing. We unite systems engineering, modeling, reliability, testing, and failure analysis into a single team that partners with design engineering. We collaborate on the deepest technical questions by challenging assumptions. As a Reliability Test Engineer (Electrical Test Systems), you will build and operate the reliability validation test infrastructure that lets us validate and ship grid-tied converters that will become part of the electrical infrastructure ahead. This role owns the development lifecycle loop from: design-reviews → failure modes → test strategy → bench design/build → test execution → data analysis → root cause → verified fixes. You’ll uncover design and process failures by executing physical tests and developing automated test equipment and data workflows. If you thrive on building capability from scratch, love lab work, and want your work to directly set the pace of iteration—this role will feel like home.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering (or related field) or equivalent practical experience.
Experience designing, building, or operating electrical test setups for complex electrical hardware (power electronics strongly preferred).
Demonstrated ownership across a meaningful chunk of a product lifecycle (prototype → iteration → validation, or development → field issues → corrective actions).
Hands-on comfort with bench power equipment and measurement methods (scopes, DMMs, power analyzers, electronic loads, DAQ/instrumentation, sensors).
Ability to design safe test systems for high power/high voltage hardware (interlocks, protection, grounding, safe procedures).
Strong debugging instincts and ability to drive root-cause closure with design/manufacturing partners.
Experience designing repeatable test cells with drawings and instructions to turn scrappy setups into production quality ones.

Nice To Haves

Experience with accelerated/environmental stress testing and reliability growth workflows (HALT/HASS, thermal/humidity cycling, power cycling).
Reliability Engineering fundamentals
Familiarity with failure mechanisms in power electronics and structured RCA/corrective action loops.

Responsibilities

Test Bench Architecture & Build Design and build electrical reliability test benches for power electronics hardware (inverters, rectifiers, DC/DC, bi-directional stages).
Specify, procure, and integrate lab equipment: power supplies/DC sources, regenerative loads/e-loads/load banks, grid simulators (where needed), DAQ systems, sensors, protection, interlocks, contactors, cabling, fixtures, and safety hardware.
Own the bench “system design”: grounding, measurement integrity, EMI-noise-aware instrumentation, protection strategy, safe operating procedures, and maintainability.
Build automation hooks for control + logging (Python or similar), and define calibration / measurement integrity practices that keep data trustworthy over time.
Reliability Strategy & Campaign Execution Translate reliability goals and suspected failure mechanisms into test plans, stress profiles, instrumentation plans, and pass/fail criteria across development and reliability qualification.
Execute reliability campaigns (burn-in, power/thermal cycling, accelerated life testing, abuse tests) and evolve them as we learn where the real cliffs are.
Drive fast debug loops during excursions: isolate, instrument deeper, reproduce, and verify that corrective actions eliminate the failure and don’t create new ones.
Data, Automation, and Closing the Loop Build data workflows that make results actionable: structured logs, automated summaries/plots, clear “what failed / why / what changed / what we verified” reporting.
Partner with design engineering (electrical, controls/firmware, mechanical/thermal) and manufacturing test to drive improvements and prevent regressions.
Establish smart regression gates: what we re-test every build, every firmware change, every engineering change—so we don’t re-learn the same lessons.
Sustain & Scale Create and maintain test stand documentation: schematics, wiring diagrams, BOMs, calibration records, procedures, and troubleshooting guides.
Improve equipment uptime and safety practices; build “common failure modes” playbooks that accelerate iteration and onboarding.