Senior Build Reliability Engineer (Machining)

About the role

As a Senior Build Reliability Engineer (Machining) at Impulse, you will own the connection between design requirements, manufacturing execution, and flight performance for machined hardware. You will work hands-on with technicians, manufacturing engineers, and supporting teams to prevent defects before they occur, rapidly diagnose failures, and continuously improve hardware reliability across spacecraft builds.

Responsibilities

• Identify, investigate, and eliminate build defects and failures through root cause analysis and corrective actions both within and outside of your work centers
• Develop inspection requirements, acceptance criteria, and quality control processes aligned with hardware and mission reliability requirements. Assist in closeout inspections
• Perform development testing to guide design decisions and characterize hardware performance
• Provide design-for-reliability guidance during design reviews and build planning
• Optimize MRP/ERP system modules for improved hardware trace, data collection, and overall reliability
• Balance inspection and test with lean principles to ensure verifications are both comprehensive and streamlined
• Develop and implement build quality metrics to heighten awareness and to improve quality landscape over time
• Act as a specification custodian for inspection plans, storage and handling procedures, process control plans, and more
• Own training and certification of elevated sign-off privileges for manufacturing technicians
• Interface with supply chain to improve vendor hardware quality
• Ensure hardware integrity by holding the line on quality standards, extreme-owning hardware containments, and driving corrective actions to completion

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, or related field
• 5+ years of experience in hardware manufacturing, aerospace, automotive, or high-reliability systems
• Demonstrated experience supporting production builds, integration, or test of primary structures and/or complex mechanical or electromechanical systems
• Strong problem-solving skills with demonstrated root cause analysis experience
• Strong theoretical and working knowledge of GD&T

Preferred Skills And Experience

• 7+ years of demonstrated build reliability experience with spacecraft, launch vehicles, aviation, robotics, or defense hardware
• Familiarity with AS9100, ISO 9001, or similar quality systems (practical application preferred over documentation focus)
• Demonstrated experience with reliability engineering concepts (FMEA, reliability growth, Weibull analysis)
• Demonstrated background working closely with technicians and production teams
• Demonstrated experience supporting rapid development or prototype-to-production transitions
• Technical familiarity with machining process such as programming, setups, tooling, machine types, equipment maintenance, and machining optimization

Pay

$140,000 - $170,000 / year