Manufacturing Reliability Engineer (Austin, TX; 50% travel to Milwaukee, WI)

- End-to-end test process ownership. Create, validate, and maintain production test protocols and gating criteria from incoming inspection through final test and shipment.

- Provisioning of bots. Design and operate provisioning flows (imaging, firmware deployment, configuration, validation) and the tooling/fixtures needed to provision and handoff robots for production.

- KPIs and continuous improvement. Own key production metrics - First Pass Yield (FPY), cycle time, and test coverage - and drive continuous improvements to meet throughput and quality targets.

- Test automation & infrastructure. Architect, implement, and maintain automated test frameworks, harnesses, and test rigs used at the CM site. Ensure tests are stable, fast, and provide actionable failure data.

- Cross-functional escalation & RCA. Lead root-cause analysis for field and production failures; coordinate corrective actions with design, firmware, and CM engineering to close quality loops.

- On-site production leadership. Be the onsite technical authority at the contract manufacturer: train operators, debug failures on the line, and continuously refine processes with CM partners.

- Improved FPY and reduced rework rates across production builds.

- Reduced per-unit cycle time for test/provisioning while increasing test coverage.

- Stable, fully automated provisioning flow with minimal manual intervention.

- 5+ years experience in production/test engineering for complex electro-mechanical products (robotics, medical devices, consumer electronics, or similar).

- Proven ownership of E2E production test processes and production provisioning at a contract manufacturer (on-site experience strongly preferred).

- Deep familiarity with test protocol development: test specification writing, fixture design, automated test implementation, and validation.

- Strong hands-on experience with firmware provisioning and validation for sensors and compute (sensor FW + compute/host FW).

- Broad technical knowledge across systems integration (ES integration), sensors (e.g., cameras, LiDAR, IMU or similar), embedded compute platforms, and networking/provisioning.

- Excellent debugging skills across hardware, firmware, and system software; able to triage complex cross-domain failures.

- Strong data-driven mindset: experienced with KPIs (FPY, cycle time, test coverage), statistical process control, and metrics reporting. Outstanding communication skills and experience working closely with contract manufacturers, operators, and cross-functional engineering teams.

- Comfortable being onsite full-time at a contract manufacturer and traveling as needed.

- Experience with robotics stacks (ROS or equivalent) and robotic sensor calibration/test.

- Familiarity with manufacturing automation tools, CI for embedded systems, and test frameworks (Python, pytest, LabVIEW, or similar).

- Experience with provisioning large fleets (device identity, secure image signing, automated configuration).