Sr. Reliability Engineer, Energy Products

What to Expect

As a Senior Engineer in the Reliability Lab, you will play a key role in enabling robust hardware development by leading advanced characterization, inspection, and root cause analysis activities across Tesla Energy and Charging products informs engineering decisions throughout the product lifecycle. This role is strongly lab-centric and spans material-, component-, and sub-system-level characterization to understand hardware behavior, degradation, and failure mechanisms observed during design validation and reliability testing.

You will apply deep experimental expertise in materials characterization, thermal analysis, microscopy, and non-destructive & destructive analysis for targeted characterization workflows, diagnose complex issues, and translate physical evidence into defensible technical conclusions and risk insights that inform design decisions and mitigation strategies.

What You’ll Do

• Lead material, component, and system-level characterization, inspection, and root cause analysis activities for energy, charging, and battery-related hardware
• Design and execute characterization and inspection workflows to identify signs of degradation for diagnostics and prognostics of new products design during the development phase
• Correlate electrical, mechanical, thermal, and materials data to observed behaviors and failure signatures; and provide clear, evidence-based conclusions and actionable insights to cross-functional teams tosupport material selection, design iterations, and process improvements
• Develop innovative investigation methods, refine, and standardize lab characterization and inspection procedure
• Maintain a safe, organized, and efficient laboratory environment following safety and 5S best practices

What You’ll Bring

• Degree Materials Science, Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Applied Physics, Chemistry, or a closely related field; or equivalent experience
• Strong hands-on laboratory background with ownership of materials characterization, inspection, and investigation activities
• Demonstrated depth in materials used in HV/MV electrical applications, such as: dielectric and insulation materials (polymers, ceramics, coatings, encapsulants, composites) and semi-conductive materials (e.g., shields, field-grading, interface-matching layers); structure–process–property relationships linking formulation, cure/crosslink state, morphology, fillers/additives, and processing history to electrical, thermal, and mechanical performance; polymer phase/state behavior (Tg, Tm, crystallinity, crosslinking, viscoelasticity) and its impact on insulation integrity; temperature- and frequency-dependent dielectric response (permittivity, loss, polarization, conductivity); electrical degradation and failure mechanisms of insulating materials and interfaces including conduction, polarization, dielectric loss, partial discharge, electrical treeing, surface tracking, flashover, and breakdown; heterogeneous interfaces (polymer–metal, polymer–ceramic, insulation–semi-conductive, multilayer stacks); and environmental and thermo-mechanical effects on electrically stressed insulating materials
• Knowledge of materials and processes in one or more adjacent domains; PCBA assemblies, materials, contamination, and process-related issues, thermo-mechanical behavior of materials and interfaces, battery and electrochemical hardware materials and interfaces
• Hands-on experience with advanced characterization and inspection techniques, including Materials and thermo-mechanical characterization (e.g., DSC, TGA, DMA, UTM), Microscopy (optical, 3D/profilometry, SEM), Elemental and compositional analysis (e.g., EDX, XRF, FTIR/Raman as applicable), non-destructive (X-ray radiography, X-ray CT)
• Strong technical documentation and communication skills, including reports, presentations, and cross-functional technical discussions
• Detail-oriented, mechanism-driven mindset with a strong drive to understand how and why materials behave under electrical, thermal, and mechanical stress
• Ability to collaborate effectively across multi-disciplinary engineering teams