Reliability Engineer

Cowboy Space • Kent, WA

7d • Onsite

About The Position

Reliability Engineer About Cowboy Space Corporation Mission Cowboy Space Corporation is solving the global energy crisis by building the infrastructure for abundant, resilient space-based solar energy. We are tackling one of humanity’s most complex engineering challenges with a world-class team dedicated to delivering a revolutionary power platform. Cowboy Space Corporation is transforming how civilization powers, computes and connects - from orbit to Earth. Background Cowboy Space Corporation is building the infrastructure to power and connect the orbital economy. Our modular, scalable satellites collect sunlight in Low Earth Orbit to enable multiple integrated applications: transmitting energy via infrared lasers (space-to-earth and space-to-space), powering on-orbit high-performance computing clusters (GPU/TPU), and providing secure, high bandwidth optical data transport. Current energy and data systems rely on complex logistics and outdated infrastructure. Cowboy Space Corporation overcomes these challenges by enabling direct, on-demand, secure, and scalable energy distribution and data processing from space. This will revolutionize how we operate in orbit and on Earth, supporting the rapidly expanding space industrial base, ISAM (In-Space Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing) operations, remote regions, and military bases. Baiju Bhatt founded Cowboy Space Corporation in 2024. Inspired by his father’s work with NASA Langley Research Center, Baiju earned his B.S. in Physics and M.S. in Mathematics at Stanford before co-founding Robinhood, now a public company that has helped over 20 million Americans access the financial system. Cowboy Space Corporation has raised ~$365 million from Index Ventures, Interlagos, Construct Ventures, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, NEA, and others. This is an ambitious mission that demands extraordinary talent. Cowboy Space Corporation’s team has worked at places like SpaceX, Blue Origin, Stoke Space, Astranis and NASA, and is based in San Carlos, CA. If you're ready to solve complex technical challenges and help build the most important energy company in the world, we want to hear from you.

Requirements

• 5-8 years in reliability, mission assurance, or systems engineering with real reliability ownership, on hardware where failure had consequences
• Command of the core methods: FMECA, fault tree analysis, common-cause analysis, allocation, Weibull and life-data analysis
• The judgment to right-size. You have seen reliability process applied where it did not belong, and you have opinions about the alternative
• Physics-of-failure instinct: you want to know why the part broke, not just how often parts like it break
• Hands-on test experience. You have stood next to hardware, watched it misbehave, and worked the anomaly to root cause
• Python sufficient to run Monte Carlos, fit life data, and build tools your teammates use without your help
• Statistical honesty about small samples. When a number rests on four data points and an assumed distribution, you say so instead of quoting three significant figures
• Willingness to make a call on incomplete information, state the assumptions, and revise
• Bachelor's degree in engineering, or similar.

Nice To Haves

• Launch vehicle or liquid rocket engine experience, especially cryogenic
• Rotating machinery reliability: turbopumps, bearings, seals, dynamic environments
• Propulsion or structural test experience, including instrumentation planning and data reduction
• Experience standing up a reliability function from nothing
• Probabilistic risk assessment or structural reliability background
• Supplier quality or nonconformance experience, and the composure for a hard vendor conversation
• Reusable vehicle experience: inspection, refurbishment, reliability across flights of the same article

Responsibilities

• Decide what reliability toolkit this program runs on, write it down short enough that people follow it, and defend every inclusion and omission
• Pick analysis depth per subsystem instead of applying one standard everywhere — some interfaces deserve a full FMECA, some deserve a one-page failure walkdown, some deserve nothing
• Own the failure analyses: FMEA/FMECA, fault trees, single-point-failure identification, common-cause assessment, and the redundancy trades that follow
• Work the physics of failure, not just the statistics — fatigue, thermal cycling, cryogenic effects, contamination, wear, and the failure modes peculiar to LOX and LNG service
• Define what each test needs to prove, and get that instrumentation into the plan before the article is built
• Run failure review and corrective action fast enough that engineers use it voluntarily
• Build the lightest tooling that work: Python and version control, not an enterprise suite
• Teach. The leverage is not the analyses you run, it is the engineers who start thinking about failure modes before they get to you.

Benefits

• The salary range for this position is $140,000 - 185,000 annually.
• Equity in Cowboy Space Corp.
• Employees and their eligible dependents may enroll in medical, dental, and vision insurance
• 401(k) retirement savings plan
• Paid time off
• 10 paid holidays per calendar year
• Paid parental leave
• Relocation assistance if applicable
• Daily lunch in the office and a fully stocked kitchen with beverages and snacks

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior