Test & Reliability Engineer, Robotics Hardware in Irvine, California at FieldAI

About Us

Field AI is transforming how robots interact with the real world. We are building risk-aware, reliable, and field-ready AI systems that address the most complex challenges in robotics, unlocking the full potential of embodied intelligence. We go beyond typical data-driven approaches or pure transformer-based architectures, and are charting a new course, with already-globally-deployed solutions delivering real-world results and rapidly improving models through real-field applications.

Test & Reliability Engineer

As a Test & Reliability Engineer on the Hardware Team at Field AI, you will build out our testing and quality control infrastructure across mechanical, electrical, embedded, and sensor systems. Your work ensures hardware is ready to ship and holds up reliably in diverse, challenging field environments such as construction, energy, and mining.

You will partner with engineers throughout the design process to ensure systems meet requirements, develop the tests that validate them before deployment, as well as identify and mitigate issues with the deployed fleet. You may also work across multiple embodiments, including quadrupeds, humanoids, and wheeled platforms.

What You Will Get To Do

1. Test & Validate System Design

• Test & Validation Infrastructure: Work with the team to set up testing infrastructure including internal facilities and relationships with third-party test labs and certification bodies

• Mechanical Testing: Conduct tests such as thermal / shock/ vibration testing, HALT/HASS (Highly Accelerated Life Testing), ingress protection testing (IP54, IP65), and destructive/non-destructive evaluation (X-ray, CT scan).

• Electrical Testing: Test for overcurrent and overvoltage conditions, run EMI/EMC emissions and immunity testing. Manage FCC and CE certification with external test labs.

• Sensor Validation: Test sensor performance (LiDAR, depth cameras, IMU, GPS) across diverse environmental conditions. Validate intrinsic/extrinsic calibration procedures both in-lab and in the field environments.

• Safety & Compliance: Support compliance with relevant safety and quality standards (e.g., ISO 26262 functional safety, SIL, ISO 9001, MIL-STD-810) via third-party certification bodies, and track evolving requirements as the company scales toward global deployments.

2. Manufacturing & Scaling Quality Control

• Incoming & Outbound Quality: Develop incoming quality control (IQC) and outbound quality checks (OQC). Design and execute sampling/AQL plans, including pulling sample units for testing.

• Process & Infrastructure: Build test processes, standards, and best practices, evolving them as the team and fleet scale. Maintain test procedures, equipment logs, and calibration traceability records. Serve as an internal evaluator of production and shipping readiness.

• Build & Supply Chain: Support production scaling and manufacturing technique scale-up. Work with vendors and contract manufacturers on component qualification, supply chain considerations, and quality-related testing.

3. Fleet Health & Reliability

• Fleet Health Monitoring: Monitor fleet health and uptime, conduct fault testing, performance testing, and system-level validation across integrated mechanical, electrical, embedded, and sensor hardware, and track calibration status across deployed units.

• Failure & Reliability Tracking: Track and report failure rates and reliability metrics (MTBF/MTTR), both internally during development and testing, and across global deployments.

• Fleet Maintenance, Debug, & Retrofits: Work directly with technicians on the test floor and in the field. Support component retrofits, root-cause/RMA failure analysis, and fleet maintenance and calibration on deployed hardware.

What You Have

• Education: B.S., M.S., or Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Robotics, or a related field.

• Experience Level: Minimum of 4+ years of hands-on experience in hardware testing, quality, or reliability engineering. We welcome candidates across mid-level to senior and staff levels.

• Broad Hardware Testing: Experience spanning mechanical and electrical test domains, including environmental and reliability testing (thermal, vibration, HALT, IP54/IP65 ingress testing), run in-house and through third-party test labs and equipment vendors.

• Quality Control: Experience with quality control processes such as incoming QC (IQC), outbound QC (OQC), and sampling/AQL, ideally in ISO 9001-aligned environments.

• Cross Functional Robotic Skills: Comfort working across electrical, mechanical, embedded, and sensor (LiDAR, depth camera) systems, and across embodiments such as wheeled platforms, quadrupeds, and humanoids, to evaluate and validate integrated hardware.

• Communication Protocols: Familiarity with common robotics communication interfaces (USB, Ethernet, CAN, I2C, GMSL) as they relate to test and validation.

• Debugging: Comfort with hardware/software debugging tools (oscilloscopes, logs, power monitors, EMI/FCC analyzers) for fault and failure analysis.

• Systems Thinking: Ability to diagnose and evaluate readiness across mechanical, electrical, thermal, and software layers.

What Will Set You Apart

• Scaling: Experience taking systems from prototype to large scale production.

• Field Environments: Experience developing and testing systems for harsh, diverse industrial field environments such as construction, energy, and mining, across global deployments.

• Deployed Robotics: Experience working on robotics deployed in real world settings such as autonomous vehicles, drones, or ruggedized robots, spanning wheeled, quadruped, or humanoid embodiments.

• Systems Level Robotics: Fluency across mechanical, electrical, and software systems.

• Reliability Engineering: Background in functional safety compliance (ISO 26262, SIL), MTBF/MTTR reliability metrics, fleet maintenance and health monitoring, RMA/failure analysis, and building a test or quality function from the ground up.

Compensation

The salary range for this role is $100,000-$150,000. The actual offer for this position will be based on factors such as relevant experience, competencies, certifications, and how well the candidate meets the qualifications outlined above. Part of our compensation package also includes full benefits, equity, and generous time.

Field AI Onsite Work Philosophy

At Field AI, we believe the most effective way to collaborate and solve complex challenges is by working together in person. This is a fully onsite role, and candidates will be expected to work from our Irvine, CA office. In-person engagement is essential to our success, and we offer flexible working hours to support focus and work-life balance.

Why Join Field AI?

We are solving one of the world’s most complex challenges: deploying robots in unstructured, previously unknown environments. Our Field Foundational Models™ set a new standard in perception, planning, localization, and manipulation, ensuring our approach is explainable and safe for deployment.

You will have the opportunity to work with a world-class team that thrives on creativity, resilience, and bold thinking. With a decade-long track record of deploying solutions in the field, winning DARPA challenge segments, and bringing expertise from organizations like DeepMind, NASA JPL, Boston Dynamics, NVIDIA, Amazon, Tesla Autopilot, Cruise Self-Driving, Zoox, Toyota Research Institute, and SpaceX, we are set to achieve our ambitious goals.

Be Part of the Next Robotics Revolution

To tackle such ambitious challenges, we need a team as unique as our vision — innovators who go beyond conventional methods and are eager to tackle tough, uncharted questions. We’re seeking individuals who challenge the status quo, dive into uncharted territory, and bring interdisciplinary expertise. Our team requires not only top AI talent but also exceptional software developers, engineers, product designers, field deployment experts, and communicators.

We are headquartered in always-sunny Irvine, Southern California and have US based and global teammates.

Join us, shape the future, and be part of a fun, close-knit team on an exciting journey!

We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. Candidates and employees are always evaluated based on merit, qualifications, and performance. We will never discriminate on the basis of race, color, gender, national origin, ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability, or any other legally protected status.

We are dedicated to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace and encourage applicants from all backgrounds to apply.