San Mateo, California, United States
Skydio is the leading US drone company and the world leader in autonomous flight, the key technology for the future of drones and aerial transportation. The Skydio team combines deep expertise in artificial intelligence, best-in-class hardware and software product development, and operational excellence to empower a broader, more diverse audience of drone users - from first responders to insurance claims adjusters, utilities, and more!
About the role:
Autonomous systems integrate electronics hardware, sensors, and real-time AI software. The complexity of these systems, coupled with their ability to move freely in the real world, underscores the importance of a strategic approach to development, performance, and reliability testing. This strategy is crucial for delivering an outstanding product.
We are seeking a driven and versatile Senior Reliability Engineer. This role will focus on driving safety and reliability initiatives, developing, and executing test plans. These plans are essential for facilitating rapid design iteration and ensuring robust product validation. The aim is to support state-of-the-art autonomous flying machines designed for a wide range of applications, including enterprise, public safety, and defense.
How you'll make an impact:
Immerse yourself in massive datasets from developmental flight telemetry and robust customer analytics. This will enable you to identify problems before they occur, perform risk assessments, develop prognostic and condition-based maintenance protocols, and firmly anchor our reliability test specifications in data.
Work with product development, embedded software, quality, manufacturing, and suppliers to define and execute comprehensive test strategies. These strategies should span from early prototyping stages through to volume production, enabling the earliest possible discovery of failure modes in complex electro-mechanical autonomous systems.
Collaborate with mechanical, electrical, and software engineering teams to perform failure analysis, identify root causes, implement corrective actions, resolve system issues, and help develop process/design mitigations.
Participate in design reviews and provide key 'design for reliability' inputs. Aim to mitigate risks from the first prototypes to the first customer shipment and beyond.
Maintain a keen interest in contributing across multiple domains to make Skydio products the default choice for users in challenging environments.
What makes you a good fit:
Possess deep curiosity and over 6 years of hands-on experience in the development, testing, and delivery of highly reliable, complex systems.
Extensive knowledge of the physics of failure and integration risks associated with one or more critical electronics subsystems, such as batteries, cameras, compute systems, or electronic sensors.
Proficiency in Python and SQL, enabling adept management and analysis of large datasets to uncover correlations and trends between our drones, their operational environments, and diverse use cases.
A systems-engineering approach to problem-solving, combined with a knack for rapidly identifying issues within mechanical, electrical, and software domains; strong desire to drive failure analyses to their true root cause.
Enthusiastic tendencies towards hands-on testing, characterization, and failure analysis.
A passion for communicating the nuances of hardware reliability to cross-functional teams, helping to drive organizational priorities.
Compensation Range: The annual base salary range for this position is $170,000 - 215,000*. Compensation will vary based on factors, including skill level, proficiencies, transferable knowledge, and experience. In addition to base salary, Skydio full-time employees are eligible to enroll in our benefit plans and take advantage of a variety of incentives and stipends.
*For some positions the pay may be dependent upon the individual's regional location.
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At Skydio we believe that diversity drives innovation. We have created a multidisciplinary environment that embraces the power of diverse perspectives to create elegant solutions for complex problems. We are committed to growing our network of people, programs, and resources to nurture an inclusive culture.
As such, we do not make hiring or other employment-related decisions on the basis of an applicant or employee’s race, color, ethnicity, national origin, citizenship, sex/gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding and related medical conditions), gender identity or expression, age, religion, disability status, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, genetic information or characteristics, veteran, military or family status, or other classifications protected by applicable federal, state or local anti-discrimination laws.
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