Reliability Engineer - Keep Autonomous Defense Production Plants Running Around the Clock

Waltham, MA | On-site

Opportunity Summary

A venture-backed defense manufacturing startup is developing skid-mounted, highly automated production systems that make the energetic materials used in U.S. and allied munitions. These plants are designed to run continuously with very little human intervention, which makes uptime one of the most important numbers in the business. The company is adding a Reliability Engineer to its core engineering team to own that number.

You will be responsible for understanding how often and why production systems stop, then removing the cause. The work spans failure data analysis, hardening of controls and automation architectures, and the maintenance and monitoring programs that make lights-out operation possible. This seat suits an engineer who has already carried uptime for an automated industrial system and naturally reasons in failure modes, MTBF, and preventive maintenance.

About Us

We are an early-stage, venture-backed advanced manufacturing company modernizing how energetic materials are produced in the United States. Our modular plants combine continuous chemistry with heavy automation to make critical materials with little to no waste, at lower cost, and on shorter timelines than the legacy facilities supplying the defense industrial base today. With an R&D lab in the Boston area and a pilot site in New England, our small technical team is moving quickly toward full-rate production.

Job Duties

• Own availability and uptime targets for continuously operating, autonomous production systems
• Mine downtime logs, failure data, and maintenance history to find repeat failure modes across mechanical, controls, and automation subsystems
• Run FMEAs, root cause investigations, and corrective and preventive actions for any failure that affects reliability
• Set up and report reliability KPIs such as MTBF, MTTR, and availability, and build improvement plans against them
• Collaborate with controls and automation engineers on PLC/SCADA architecture, sensor redundancy, and fail-safe logic that supports lights-out operation
• Build preventive and predictive maintenance programs, including condition monitoring and sensor-driven early warning of failures
• Work with mechanical, process, and controls teams early in new system design to remove failure points before hardware is built
• Support commissioning and ramp-up of new systems with an eye on long-term reliability, beyond day-one performance
• Lead post-incident reviews and confirm corrective actions are implemented and effective
• Maintain failure databases, reliability documentation, and audit-ready records
• Contribute to test plans, engineering design reviews, and technical documentation

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in mechanical, electrical, mechatronics, or robotics engineering, or a related field
• 3+ years of experience in reliability engineering, maintenance engineering, or controls and automation roles centered on uptime
• Proven end-to-end ownership of reliability or uptime performance for an automated industrial system
• Hands-on use of reliability methods and metrics, including FMEA, root cause analysis, MTBF, and MTTR
• Working understanding of PLC and SCADA architectures and how automation design decisions affect reliability
• Quick, rigorous troubleshooting of hardware and automation problems
• Comfortable working hands-on in lab, fabrication, and plant settings, and able to lift up to 50 lbs
• U.S. person status and eligibility to obtain a U.S. security clearance
• Ability to work on-site and travel between sites as needed

Preferred Experience

• Building predictive maintenance, condition monitoring, or sensor-based fault detection programs
• Experience with Ignition SCADA, Siemens TIA Portal, or comparable automation platforms
• Familiarity with functional safety and reliability standards such as IEC 61508 or ISO 13849
• Background in continuous process plants or other autonomous, lights-out manufacturing environments
• Experience in defense, aerospace, energetics, or other regulated manufacturing

Why Join Us

• Own reliability for a new class of autonomous production plant, with a direct voice in design decisions
• Build maintenance and monitoring strategy from the ground up instead of inheriting a legacy program
• Work across mechanical, controls, and process engineering on a small, technical team
• Help rebuild a critical part of the U.S. and allied defense supply chain
• Meaningful early-stage equity in a fast-growing, venture-backed company
• Grow with the company as it scales from pilot operations to full-rate manufacturing

Compensation Details

$110,000 - $160,000 + equity