Sr. Mechanical Reliability Engineer, Megapack

$84,000 - $276,000/Yr

Tesla - Palo Alto, CA

Full-time - Mid Level

Palo Alto, CA

Transportation Equipment Manufacturing

About the position

As a Sr. Mechanical Reliability Engineer focusing on Tesla Megapack, you will play a key role in designing reliability into Tesla's industrial energy storage systems ensuring the products meet the highest standards of reliability. This role follows the reliability lifecycle of the product from concept to design, validation testing/analysis, manufacturing, and field operation to design-in, confirm, and grow exceptional reliability at every stage. You will investigate failures through physics of failure analysis and physical testing to accurately predict the system's robustness and optimize product reliability while accelerating Tesla's next gen products' time to market. This role is ideal for an Engineer who is passionate about reliability physics, enjoys problem-solving, and thrives in a fast-paced collaborative environment. In this position, you will facilitate Design FMEA sessions to detect risks, drive reliable design choices, and inform validation testing. You will set and communicate reliability requirements and targets for site, product, subsystem, and components. Additionally, you will define reliability test plans, design test conditions, set test duration and sample size, based on physics of failure modeling and accelerated life testing principles. Analyzing lab test data and field data to identify reliability trends, forecasting reliability estimates utilizing statistical analysis, and recommending design improvements will be key responsibilities. You will also analyze usage and environmental conditions from the field to improve requirement setting and testing methods. Your role will involve communicating and driving test plans, results, learnings, and recommendations to various stakeholders within the organization. You will closely collaborate with cross-functional teams, including test, reliability data science, design, architecture modeling, service, and quality to identify potential reliability issues and drive corrective actions. Researching failure mechanisms to build more robust validation plans and influencing design choices will be essential. You will drive reliability assessments in product design reviews and clearly communicate risk at each phase of product development and for released products. Furthermore, you will influence supplier selection for higher reliability and provide clear guidance on reliability requirements and demonstration to suppliers. Facilitating failure analysis to understand root cause and drive resolution of failures occurring during product development phases will also be part of your responsibilities. Lastly, you will provide reliability design guidelines and apply reliability lessons learned to enable continuous improvement, answering complex questions on fleet usage and behavior to enable proactive health monitoring, grow reliability, and minimize field failures.

Responsibilities

• Facilitate Design FMEA sessions to detect risks, drive reliable design choices and inform validation testing
• Set and communicate reliability requirements and targets for site, product, subsystem, and components
• Define reliability test plans, design test conditions, set test duration and sample size, based on physics of failure modeling and accelerated life testing principles
• Analyze lab test data and field data to identify reliability trends, forecast reliability estimates utilizing statistical analysis and recommend design improvements
• Analyze usage and environmental conditions from field to improve requirement setting and testing methods
• Communicate and drive test plans, results, learnings, and recommendations to various stakeholders within the organization
• Closely collaborate with cross-functional teams to identify potential reliability issues and drive corrective actions
• Research failure mechanisms to build more robust validation plans and influence design choices
• Drive reliability assessments in product design reviews and clearly communicate risk at each phase of product development
• Influence supplier selection for higher reliability and provide clear guidance on reliability requirements and demonstration to suppliers
• Facilitate failure analysis to understand root cause and drive resolution of failures occurring during product development phases
• Provide reliability design guidelines and apply reliability lessons learned to enable continuous improvement
• Answer complex questions on fleet usage and behavior to enable proactive health monitoring, grow reliability, and minimize field failures

Requirements

• Bachelor's Degree in Mechanical Engineering or a related field and five years of experience in a Reliability Engineering role or equivalent experience
• Understanding of accelerated testing methods, governing equations, and physics of failure for different failure mechanisms
• Understanding of applied statistics and reliability statistics (Weibull distribution, Maximum Likelihood Estimation, Bayesian methods, Monte Carlo analysis, etc.)
• Understanding of Accelerated Degradation modeling and reliability prediction methods
• Knowledge of material degradation mechanisms and their impact on mechanical performance
• Experience analyzing test results and interpreting reliability insights
• Knowledge of reliability growth techniques, such as Crow-AMSAA and Crow Extended
• Knowledge of the ReliaSoft Synthesis Platform, including Weibull++, BlockSim, ALTA, RGA, and xFMEA
• Working knowledge of failure analysis techniques such as optical microscopy, SEM, CSAM, X-ray, cross-sectioning and EDX
• Working knowledge of programming languages, preferably Python, or Matlab

Benefits

• Aetna PPO and HSA plans with $0 payroll deduction
• Family-building, fertility, adoption and surrogacy benefits
• Dental and vision plans with $0 paycheck contribution
• Company Paid HSA Contribution when enrolled in the High Deductible Aetna medical plan with HSA
• Healthcare and Dependent Care Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA)
• LGBTQ+ care concierge services
• 401(k) with employer match
• Employee Stock Purchase Plans
• Company paid Basic Life, AD&D, short-term and long-term disability insurance
• Employee Assistance Program
• Sick and Vacation time (Flex time for salary positions), and Paid Holidays
• Back-up childcare and parenting support resources
• Voluntary benefits including critical illness, hospital indemnity, accident insurance, theft & legal services, and pet insurance
• Weight Loss and Tobacco Cessation Programs
• Tesla Babies program
• Commuter benefits
• Employee discounts and perks program