Hardware Test Technician - Lab Manager

Life360 • Fremont, CA

5d • $115,000 - $135,000 • Onsite

About The Position

Life360 is seeking an experienced Hardware Test Technician to run its hardware test lab and support engineering work needed to ship reliable consumer devices. This is the team’s first dedicated technician role, responsible for managing the lab day to day and working alongside electrical, RF, and validation engineers. The role reports to the Director of Hardware Engineering and is on-site in Fremont.

The technician will own lab instruments, fixtures, test records, and returns analysis. The role covers test execution, soldering and rework, quality and returns analysis, equipment and facility management, sample handling, and logistics. The successful hire will establish traceable test results and a process for triaging and trending field returns, while helping build new lab capabilities and scalable standards for testing, quality, and returns.

Requirements

• Several years of hands-on experience in an electronics or hardware test lab; consumer electronics experience is a plus.
• Associate degree in electronics, electrical engineering technology, or a related field, or equivalent hands-on experience.
• Ability to work independently and stay organized while running a lab day to day without close supervision.
• Careful, safety-minded approach with strong documentation and data-logging habits.
• Clear communication skills, including sharing findings and flagging problems in a way engineers can act on.
• Curiosity and persistence in investigating failures and identifying root causes.
• Some familiarity with AI tools and willingness to learn and use them for test harnesses and automation.
• Excellent hand-soldering and small-board rework skills, including BGA, QFN, fine-pitch packages down to 0201/01005, complex rework, and PCB modifications.
• Comfort using standard bench instruments, including oscilloscopes, multimeters, power analyzers, and power supplies.
• Experience building test fixtures and cables, with mechanical aptitude to make them fit and function.
• Light scripting skills for data capture and test automation, and ability to design supporting test fixtures.
• Knowledge of ESD-safe practices and careful handling of sensitive components.
• Ability to perform electrical and power measurements, including checking supply rails and current draw and profiling power and battery drain.
• Battery-testing experience, including charge/discharge cycling, capacity checks, and safe handling of lithium cells and packs.
• Experience with ESD testing and ESD-controlled handling.
• Ability to set up and run basic mechanical and environmental tests, including drop, temperature/humidity, and thermal-cycling sequences, and log results.
• Ability to perform continuity checks and component-level troubleshooting and read schematics to isolate faults.
• Some familiarity with basic RF/wireless bench checks, such as transmit-power or signal-strength measurements.
• Experience with defect analysis and determining what went wrong and why.
• Production quality experience informing decisions about products to ship.
• Customer or field quality experience analyzing returns and connecting field failures to root causes.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with broader product-reliability testing, including tumble, mechanical shock, and random or sine vibration.
• Experience with accelerated and environmental stress testing, including thermal shock, HAST (damp heat), and accelerated-life screens (HALT/HASS).
• Experience with ingress and durability testing, including water and dust ingress (IPX7/IP68), salt-fog and corrosion, button and connector life-cycling, and chemical or materials exposure.
• Broader mechanical background and comfort using mechanical and environmental test rigs.
• Knowledge of ASTM/ISO test standards.
• Experience with over-the-air RF testing in an anechoic chamber (TRP/TIS) and GPS/GNSS testing with a constellation simulator.
• Familiarity with pre-compliance or certification testing (FCC, UL, IEC).
• IPC (J-STD-001 / IPC-A-610) or ESD certification.

Responsibilities

• Set up devices and execute engineer-defined electrical and power, functional, wireless, environmental, and product-reliability test sequences; record results consistently.
• Monitor test results for anomalies and communicate actionable findings to engineers.
• Organize test records and data to ensure results are traceable and reliable.
• Maintain and calibrate lab equipment, manage parts inventory, procure equipment and capabilities, and coordinate services and deliveries.
• Triage customer and field returns, reproduce failures, identify likely causes, log and trend findings, and route deeper analysis to engineers.
• Analyze defects in development and production units and help maintain product quality.
• Connect production and customer quality findings by tracing field failures to products and processes.
• Build test fixtures, jigs, and cabling for devices under test.
• Perform precise hand soldering, small-board rework, and PCB modifications.
• Manage the lab’s ESD program and safe handling, storage, and disposal of batteries and other materials.
• Specify and design test fixtures, interfaces, and instrumentation clusters to improve repeatability and automation.
• Use AI tools to help develop test harnesses that communicate with devices and instruments and to create and run automated test sequences.
• Identify manual test steps that can be made repeatable and reliable, implement solutions, and share them with the team.
• Track devices and samples under test and prepare and ship units to external labs and partners.
• Manage device movements and team logistics.
• Support material and beta programs by keeping parts, samples, and units organized and accounted for.
• Keep the lab organized, safe, and ready for use; improve its setup, processes, and documentation.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, vision, life, and disability insurance plans, 100% paid for employees.
• Paid parental leave.
• 401(k) plan with company matching program.
• Mental Wellness Program and Employee Assistance Program (EAP).
• Flexible PTO, companywide holidays, and summer and winter shutdowns.
• Learning and Development programs.
• Equipment, tools, and reimbursement support for a productive remote environment.
• Free Life360 Platinum Membership and Tile trackers.
• Equity compensation in the form of Restricted Stock Units (RSUs).

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: Associate degree