Reliability Engineering Lead

Heron Power•Scotts Valley, CA

About The Position

Reliability is at the core of our company and everything we design. We stand behind our products with a full lifetime warranty across all applications—a commitment that only holds up if reliability is engineered in from first principles, not bolted on at the end. As our Reliability Engineering Lead, you will drive reliability-by-design across Heron Power’s power electronics products—from concept through field deployment—grounded in Physics of Failure (PoF) and Design for Reliability (DFR) principles rather than generic stress screening. You’ll set reliability strategy at the corporate level and partner across Electrical, Mechanical, Firmware/Software, Quality, Product, and Commercial teams to ensure it’s designed in at every level, from warranty terms through lifecycle cost of ownership.

Requirements

Bachelor’s or advanced degree in Mechanical, Electrical, Reliability, or related Engineering discipline
Demonstrated depth in Physics of Failure (PoF) and Design for Reliability (DFR) methodologies, grounded in underlying failure mechanisms (e.g., fatigue, thermal, electromigration, corrosion)
Hands-on experience deriving mission profiles from field/use-condition data and translating them into accelerated life test calculations (acceleration factors, sample size, duration)
Experience defining reliability requirements that explicitly account for cost, schedule, and business risk tradeoffs
Strong grounding in reliability statistics—Weibull analysis, censored data handling, confidence intervals, FMEA/FTA
Demonstrated ability to work cross-functionally with Electrical, Mechanical, and Firmware/Software teams and Quality organizations
Experience designing for maintainability, serviceability, and system availability—translating those attributes into concrete design decisions
Demonstrated experience partnering with Product and Commercial teams to connect warranty/business commitments with engineering design targets

Nice To Haves

Experience owning field reliability strategy end-to-end
Prior experience setting reliability strategy or goals at an organizational (not just program) level
Published research or industry papers in reliability or physics of failure (e.g., IEEE RAMS or equivalent venues)
Experience building or scaling a reliability engineering function or team
Experience in power electronics or related high-reliability hardware domains

Responsibilities

Define product reliability requirements, balancing target reliability and failure-rate metrics against cost, schedule, and manufacturability constraints
Set reliability strategy and goals at the corporate level, aligning engineering, product, and manufacturing teams around shared reliability targets and roadmaps
Apply Physics of Failure and Design for Reliability principles throughout the product development lifecycle, identifying dominant failure mechanisms early and driving design decisions that mitigate them before hardware exists
Derive mission profiles from real-world use conditions and translate them into accelerated life test (ALT) calculations—acceleration factors, sample size, and test duration
Build and maintain reliability models (Weibull/lifetime distributions, FMEA, fault tree analysis) to predict failure modes and quantify confidence levels for design decisions
Own field reliability strategy, closing the loop between field return/failure data and our design, test, and mission-profile assumptions
Partner with Product and Commercial teams to define warranty terms, translating our full lifetime warranty commitment into concrete design targets
Own the lifecycle cost as a design attribute—driving decisions on service, repair, and system architecture that keep products highly available and cost-effective to operate over decades, beating the competition on lifetime cost of ownership
Partner directly with Electrical, Mechanical, and Firmware/Software engineering teams, as well as the Quality organization, to ensure reliability is designed in at the component and system level
Mentor and potentially lead a team of reliability engineers, setting technical direction and reviewing mission-profile derivations, ALT plans, and findings