Senior Design Quality Engineer

TL;DR

Senior Design Quality Engineer (AI/IoT): Act as independent quality and systems-risk steward across hardware, firmware, software, and AI subsystems for wildfire detection cameras with an accent on system-level risk mitigation, verification strategies, and field reliability. Focus on defining release criteria, driving risk-based decisions, and ensuring safe operation under real-world conditions like thermal cycling and network failures.

San Francisco, California (Hybrid)

$183K – $225K • Offers Equity

Company

175+ person growth-stage startup headquartered in San Francisco, leader in early wildfire detection using AI-powered 360-degree cameras and satellite data.

What you will do

• Serve as Design Quality representative in product teams, influencing requirements, architecture, and release criteria from concept to production.
• Lead system-level risk artifacts like FMEAs/DFMEAs with traceability to requirements, tests, and mitigations.
• Define and own system-level verification & validation strategies, including test plans, field trials, and statistical acceptance criteria.
• Drive risk-based decisions, prioritize mitigations, and document rationale for releases.
• Execute reliability and stress tests emulating field conditions such as power/thermal cycling and network issues.
• Collaborate on AI observability, telemetry for model monitoring, and mentor on structured problem-solving like 5-Whys and DMAIC.

Requirements

• BS in Engineering (Mechanical, Electrical, Computer, Systems or related) or equivalent.
• 10+ years in design quality, reliability engineering, systems engineering for hardware/firmware/software/AI products.
• Experience owning system-level risk artifacts and risk-based decision making.
• Hands-on with verification & validation, test methods, and statistical techniques.
• Deep product empathy and experience driving tradeoffs for field outcomes.
• Excellent communication to present to engineers and executives.

Nice to have

• Experience with camera systems, imaging pipelines, sensor fusion, or edge AI.
• OTA updates, telemetry-driven iteration for design and AI models.
• Statistical tools (Minitab, Python) and reliability models (Weibull, MTBF/MTTF).
• Mentoring and scaling quality processes in growing companies.

Culture & Benefits

• Hybrid-remote work environment.
• Comprehensive medical, dental, vision coverage.
• Matching 401(k) plan.
• Flexible paid time off.
• Stock options for full-time roles.