Senior Reliability Engineer

About this role

WHO WE ARE AeroVect is transforming ground handling with autonomy, redefining how airlines and ground service providers around the globe run day-to-day operations. We are a Series A company backed by top-tier venture capital investors in aviation and autonomous driving. Our customers include some of the world’s largest airlines and ground handling providers. For more information, visit www.aerovect.com http://www.aerovect.com. We are looking for a Senior Reliability Engineer to establish and lead AeroVect's reliability engineering practice. As our first reliability engineer, you will build the analytical foundation that ensures our autonomous tractor fleet meets the uptime and durability requirements of 24/7 airport operations. You will run reliability analyses across mechanical, electrical and systems domains — from early design stages through field deployment — and own the processes that translate those findings into measurable product improvements. You will also manage relationships with external test labs and certification partners, running environmental, mechanical and accelerated life testing programs to validate hardware before it reaches the ramp. This is a high-ownership role for an engineer who can work as an individual contributor and thought leader, partnering deeply with hardware, systems and field engineering teams while building a reliability practice that scales with the company. YOU WILL - Establish AeroVect's reliability engineering practice, including defining processes, metrics and tooling for tracking and improving fleet reliability from design through field deployment. - Lead failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA), fault tree analysis (FTA) and reliability block diagram (RBD) activities across mechanical, electrical and embedded systems. - Define and track reliability metrics including MTBF, MTTR and field failure rates; build dashboards and reporting structures to give engineering and leadership visibility into fleet health. - Analyze field failure data from our deployed fleet to identify root causes, prioritize corrective actions, and close the loop between field observations and design improvements. - Define and manage external reliability and environmental testing programs, including accelerated life testing, vibration and shock testing, thermal cycling and ingress protection validation, working with third-party test labs to execute. - Partner with hardware engineers during the design phase to conduct design reviews with a reliability lens, provide DFR input, and identify failure risks before they reach production. - Develop and maintain reliability requirements for new hardware programs and vehicle platforms, ensuring traceability from system requirements to component-level specifications. - Support supplier qualification activities by defining reliability acceptance criteria and reviewing vendor test data and qualification reports. - Build and maintain reliability documentation including test plans, analysis reports, reliability growth tracking and lessons-learned databases. YOU HAVE - 5–8 years of hands-on reliability engineering experience in a hardware-centric industry such as automotive, aerospace, robotics, industrial equipment or defense. - Deep expertise in reliability analysis methods including FMEA, FTA, and RBD, with direct experience leading these analyses on complex electromechanical systems. - Experience defining and managing environmental and accelerated life testing programs, including writing test plans and interpreting results from third-party labs. - Ability to work across mechanical, electrical and embedded systems domains — understanding failure modes in each and how they interact at the system level. - Comfort working as the sole reliability practitioner at a company, with the ability to prioritize and build a program incrementally rather than inheriting an established one. - Strong data analysis skills and experience working with field failure data to drive engineering decisions. - Excellent communication skills, with the ability to present technical findings to engineering teams and to non-technical stakeholders including leadership and customers. WE PREFER - Experience with autonomous vehicles, mobile robots or aviation and airport ground support equipment. - Familiarity with relevant standards such as MIL-STD-810, IEC 60068, ISO 26262 or ARP4761. - Experience with reliability growth modeling and Weibull analysis tools. - Prior ownership of a supplier qualification or reliability acceptance testing program. - Exposure to safety-critical system design and its intersection with reliability requirements. - Experience building a reliability practice from scratch at an early-stage company. Note: This role will require occasional travel to Atlanta (ATL) to support field operations and testing.