Reliability Engineer III - Project Based

This is a project-based employee role supporting the development, verification, validation, and reliability improvement of ASI's autonomous vehicle platforms. Development phases of this nature typically continue through project completion, often spanning two to four years, although scope and duration are determined by business and customer needs.

JOB SUMMARY

The Reliability Engineer IV leads complex reliability engineering activities within ASI's Validation & Verification Team to improve the durability, availability, maintainability, and operational performance of autonomous vehicle systems. This role develops reliability requirements, identifies technical risks, defines validation strategies, analyzes failures, and ensures corrective actions are supported by objective test evidence.

As a Level IV engineer within ASI's five-level engineering structure, this position independently leads complex reliability workstreams and influences system design, test planning, and release-readiness decisions across multiple engineering disciplines. The role serves as a technical resource for reliability analysis, failure investigation, and validation methods while providing guidance to less-experienced engineers. Company-wide reliability strategy and final technical authority remain aligned with engineering leadership and Level V technical experts.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Lead reliability planning, analysis, verification, and validation activities for autonomous vehicle systems, subsystems, and components
• Develop measurable reliability, availability, maintainability, and durability requirements based on system needs and operating environments
• Translate reliability requirements into validation plans, test procedures, acceptance criteria, and objective evidence
• Lead Design Failure Mode and Effects Analysis, Process Failure Mode and Effects Analysis, and system-level FMEA activities
• Perform or support Failure Modes, Effects, and Criticality Analysis, Fault Tree Analysis, reliability block diagrams, and structured risk assessments
• Identify reliability risks involving mechanical, electrical, software, sensor, computing, communication, and vehicle-control systems
• Develop reliability-focused verification and validation strategies for complex hardware and software integrated systems
• Define environmental, durability, accelerated-life, qualification, and system-level test requirements
• Plan testing involving vibration and shock, temperature and thermal cycling, humidity, water ingress, splash, pressure washing, salt exposure, dust, contamination, and mechanical loading
• Establish representative duty cycles, mission profiles, environmental conditions, and operational use cases for reliability testing
• Partner with systems engineering to maintain traceability between reliability requirements, system risks, test activities, and validation evidence
• Collaborate with test engineers to ensure test methods accurately measure reliability objectives and expose meaningful failure modes
• Lead complex failure investigations using root cause analysis, fault isolation, physical inspection, test data, system logs, and structured problem-solving methods
• Coordinate corrective and preventive actions with mechanical, electrical, software, systems, manufacturing, supplier, and test teams
• Verify corrective actions through targeted testing, regression testing, and reliability-growth activities
• Analyze laboratory, vehicle, field, maintenance, and operational data to identify failure trends and emerging risks
• Develop reliability metrics, dashboards, technical reports, and program-health summaries
• Perform life-data analysis, degradation analysis, failure-rate estimation, Weibull analysis, and other statistical evaluations
• Support reliability predictions, availability modeling, maintainability assessments, and serviceability evaluations
• Lead reliability-growth planning using test-analyze-fix-test and similar improvement processes
• Evaluate designs for fault tolerance, environmental robustness, durability, serviceability, and maintainability
• Participate in design reviews, requirements reviews, test-readiness reviews, and release-readiness assessments
• Provide reliability recommendations before system integration, field deployment, or customer acceptance testing
• Support component qualification, supplier reliability reviews, and investigation of supplier-related failures
• Lead investigations involving intermittent, cross-subsystem, or difficult-to-reproduce failures
• Maintain clear documentation of assumptions, risks, analyses, test results, corrective actions, and remaining system limitations
• Improve reliability engineering tools, templates, test methods, documentation standards, and data practices
• Provide technical guidance to engineers involved in reliability analysis, validation testing, and failure investigations
• Communicate technical risks, findings, and recommendations to engineering teams, program leadership, and other stakeholders
• Support field testing, customer deployments, and on-site failure investigations as required

ESSENTIAL EDUCATION, WORK EXPERIENCE, JOB SKILLS

• Bachelor's degree in Reliability Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Systems Engineering, Industrial Engineering, or a related technical field
• Typically eight or more years of experience in reliability engineering, verification and validation, product assurance, durability testing, failure analysis, or related engineering work
• Demonstrated experience independently leading complex reliability analyses, validation activities, and failure investigations
• Strong experience with FMEA, FMECA, Fault Tree Analysis, root cause analysis, corrective-action processes, and reliability risk assessment
• Experience developing reliability requirements and verification methods for complex electromechanical or hardware-software integrated systems
• Experience creating and executing environmental, durability, accelerated-life, or qualification test plans
• Ability to evaluate interactions among mechanical, electrical, software, sensor, and system-level failure modes
• Experience analyzing test, field, maintenance, warranty, or operational data to identify trends and reliability risks
• Working knowledge of reliability statistics, probability distributions, Weibull analysis, confidence limits, and life-data analysis
• Experience establishing measurable test criteria, technical acceptance thresholds, and release-readiness recommendations
• Understanding of requirements traceability, verification methods, validation evidence, and product-development lifecycles
• Ability to interpret engineering drawings, electrical schematics, system requirements, test results, software logs, and technical documentation
• Experience using data-analysis tools such as Python, MATLAB, Minitab, JMP, Excel, or comparable platforms
• Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional technical investigations and drive issues through resolution and verification
• Ability to provide technical leadership and guidance without direct supervisory responsibility
• Strong technical writing, presentation, documentation, and communication skills
• Ability to work effectively with engineering, test, operations, suppliers, and customer-facing teams

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Master's degree in Reliability Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Systems Engineering, or a related discipline
• Certified Reliability Engineer or comparable professional certification
• Experience supporting autonomous vehicles, robotics, heavy equipment, industrial machinery, or off-road platforms
• Experience with Reliability, Availability, Maintainability, and Safety analysis
• Experience developing FMECA, reliability block diagrams, maintainability models, or availability assessments
• Experience with reliability-growth modeling and test-analyze-fix-test programs
• Familiarity with physics-of-failure methods and accelerated-life test development
• Experience with highly accelerated life testing, highly accelerated stress screening, or design-of-experiments methods
• Experience evaluating vibration, shock, temperature, humidity, dust, water, corrosion, contamination, and pressure-wash exposure
• Familiarity with functional safety, safety-critical systems, and risk-based verification and validation practices
• Experience with vehicle communication networks, embedded systems, sensors, autonomous software, or vehicle-control systems
• Experience supporting prototype-to-production transitions and field-reliability improvement programs
• Experience performing supplier reliability assessments and component qualification activities
• Familiarity with JAMA, Jira, PLM systems, FRACAS tools, requirements-management platforms, or similar engineering systems

BENEFITS

ASI offers a comprehensive benefits package, including:

• 401k with employer match
• Generous HSA contribution
• PTO, paid holidays, and flextime
• ASI covers 90% of employee medical plan costs

At Autonomous Solutions, Inc. (ASI), we are committed to fostering a diverse, inclusive, and equitable workplace where all employees and applicants have equal opportunities. We prohibit discrimination and harassment of any kind based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other legally protected characteristic. ASI complies with all applicable federal, state, and local laws regarding nondiscrimination in employment and is dedicated to providing reasonable accommodations for individuals with disabilities throughout the hiring process.

This is a full-time, project-based employment opportunity.

Your employment with ASI will be "at will," meaning that either you or ASI may terminate your employment at any time for any lawful reason, with or without cause or advance notice.