R&D Test Engineer, Instrumentation
Quality Assurance
San Francisco, CA, USA
USD 125k-145k / year
Role Description
We are seeking a curious, hands-on R&D Test Engineer with an instrumentation focus to join our Physical R&D team. You will own the test infrastructure our scientists depend on: designing and building fixtures, instrumenting test systems, developing data collection methods, running experiments, and turning one-off prototype setups into repeatable systems.
Our scientists define what to investigate, and together you collaboratively define how; examples include fixturing, sensor selection, data acquisition, procedure, and controls. You will build the systems that make those tests possible, run the experiments, and ensure they produce trustworthy data. The work spans a wide range of environments, including our lab, warehouse, outdoor microgrid, and future pilot-scale settings, each requiring solutions tailored to the environment and test goals.
You will also be the person who makes test methods durable. When an experiment or test grows past an exploratory stage, you mature it through designing fixtureand sending updates, writing SOPs, or training others.
This role sits on the R&D team, which is responsible for the sensing and measurement performance of our devices rather than their design or implementation. It is not a reliability, qualification, or manufacturing test role. You will not own device design, though what you measure will regularly inform it.
Responsibilities
- Develop and improve existing prototype physical experimentation infrastructure. Design and build test fixtures, rigs, and setups in collaboration with R&D Technicians and Research Engineers. Translate guidance and test intent from Research Engineers into a physical setup that produces trustworthy data.
- Architect, source, assemble, and operate electromechanical test setups end to end. Scope the build, select and procure components and instrumentation, manage vendors and machine shops, and get it working on the bench and at our test facilities.
- Instrument test articles and fixtures: select, mount, wire, and calibrate sensors (including strain gauges, load cells, accelerometers and IMUs, thermocouples, displacement and position sensors).
- Set up data acquisition systems using LabView that collects and parses data in a format readily ingestible by down stream data processing pipelines.
- Run experiments, with an emphasis on tests that are novel, ambiguous, or still changing shape as researchers continue to learn and gain valuable insights from the test infrastructure you create. Prepare equipment, execute the test, keep clean records, and deliver organized, well-labeled datasets.
- Work to improve repeatability via writing SOPs, setup and calibration procedures, and test reports. Train other teams and technicians to run mature test methods, and support the handoff until they are self-sufficient.
- Partner with research engineers to turn test intent into an executable plan — asking the questions needed to be confident the test will actually answer the question being asked.
- Own our R&D lab and its equipment: fixtures, instrumentation, calibration status, consumables, and safe operation as well as plan and conduct preventative maintenance,
Required Skills
- Bachelor’s degree in an engineering or related technical field, plus 3+ years of hands-on test, instrumentation, or lab engineering experience. Equivalent practical experience is also welcome.
- Instrumentation fundamentals: sensor selection, mounting and wiring, signal conditioning, calibration, and a working understanding of noise, grounding, sampling rate, and where measurement error comes from.
- Electronics bench work: soldering and harnessing, custom cabling, basic circuit troubleshooting.
- Practical shop skills: experienced with light power tools, basic fabrication and wiring and harnessing.
- Track record designing and executing instrumented tests in an industrial or research setting.
- Clear technical documentation: test plans, SOPs, and reports that someone else can follow without you in the room.
- Comfortable working with researchers as we learn and adapt to new information: able to plan and execute good tests within a scientific framing that others own, and curious enough to ask the questions that keep the tests providing robust data.
Bonus Skills
- Proficiency in LabView (writing data acquisition code, light automation and data processing) and NI hardware (cDAQ hardware, CompactRIO, high frequency modules)
- Field and outdoor testing: experience running instrumented tests outside a controlled lab environment.
- Test measurement ownership: experience taking responsibility for measurement quality end to end — calibration traceability, verification, repeatability studies, and measurement uncertainty.
125000 - 145000 USD a year
