Staff Failure Analysis Engineer (Robotics)

Location: Onsite at the Salem, Oregon facility, with regular presence in testing labs, service centers, and assembly lines; travel up to 20% to customer logistics centers, field trial sites, or component suppliers. All roles are U.S.-based, and applicants must have current authorization to work in the United States.

Anticipated base salary: $147,000–$191,000 USD annually.

Company

hirify.global develops commercially deployed humanoid robots for warehouses, manufacturing facilities, and distribution centers.

What you will do

• Lead end-to-end failure investigations of field-returned actuators, gearboxes, cable harnesses, PCBAs, motor controllers, safety sensors, and battery management systems.
• Correlate physical failure modes with fleet telemetry, CAN/EtherCAT logs, crash dumps, and time-series sensor data to reproduce field anomalies in laboratory environments.
• Own 8D, 5-Why, Fishbone, FTA, and CAPA execution with Design Engineering, Manufacturing Quality, and Supplier Quality.
• Define rapid containment protocols, triage criteria, and inspection instructions for safety-critical and fleet-wide failure events.
• Manage failure-analysis lab equipment and external CT, SEM/EDX, cross-sectioning, and metallurgical testing partners.
• Standardize RMA and depot workflows, failure taxonomies, disposition tracking, and Pareto reporting for engineering and operations leadership.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechatronics, Systems Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
• 6+ years of hands-on failure analysis, field quality, or reliability engineering experience supporting complex electromechanical systems in robotics, autonomous vehicles, EV/powertrain, aerospace, or heavy industrial automation.
• Experience tracing cross-domain issues involving mechanical stress and wear, electrical signal degradation, motor-drive failures, and firmware/sensor interaction.
• Practical mastery of 8D, Fault Tree Analysis, FMEA, and Ishikawa diagrams, with verified corrective actions that eliminated field failure modes.
• Proficiency with DMMs, high-bandwidth oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, optical microscopy, thermal cameras, and torque test fixtures.

Nice to have

• Experience with Linux, ROS, CAN/EtherCAT protocol analyzers, and cloud-based time-series visualization such as Grafana, Datadog, or custom fleet dashboards.
• Knowledge of functional safety standards ISO 13849 and IEC 62061 in industrial automation or mobile robotics.
• Experience managing third-party destructive and non-destructive testing labs, including SEM, EDX, and X-ray/CT scanning.
• ASQ CQE or CRE certification, or Lean Six Sigma Green or Black Belt certification.

Culture & Benefits

• Full-time employment with a 6% 401(k) company match, company stock options, and an annual discretionary bonus for eligible roles.
• Company-paid medical, dental, vision, and short- and long-term disability insurance, with benefits available from the first day.
• Paid parental leave, EAP support, professional development, tuition reimbursement, and relocation assistance for eligible roles.
• Flexible unlimited PTO for exempt employees or 10 vacation days and paid sick leave for non-exempt employees, plus 12 company holidays and a winter shutdown.
• Catered lunches four times per week and snacks at Salem and Pittsburgh locations.