Reliability Test Engineer

GRAM is a self-replication company creating machine labor for the physical economy.

Our first research frontier is self-preservation: the base case of physical self-replication. We are building a new class of machines called insectoids that can survive, coordinate, and recover without humans. We believe scalable machine labor requires more than single-agent task generality or machines shaped in our image.

You will own reliability and qualification testing across insectoid hardware. Your scope includes test strategy, load and environment definition, instrumentation, fixtures, accelerated-life methods, failure analysis, acceptance criteria, and release evidence from components through integrated machines.

You will build tests that expose failure mechanisms early, reproduce field conditions, and convert every failure into a quantitative design or process decision. Success means critical failure modes have stated limits, representative tests, traceable results, and verified corrective actions—and that measured improvements can be distinguished from test artifacts or uncontrolled configuration changes.

• →Translate operating loads, environmental exposure, duty cycles, and hazard analyses into component, subsystem, and integrated-machine test requirements.

• →Design and commission instrumented fixtures for load, cycle, thermal, vibration, impact, contamination, ingress, wear, and combined-environment testing.

• →Build qualification and acceptance plans with explicit sample rationale, failure criteria, margins, configuration control, and data-retention requirements.

• →Develop accelerated-life tests grounded in a defensible failure mechanism and correlate them against representative operation.

• →Lead failure investigations using physical evidence, telemetry, teardown, metrology, and controlled reproduction.

• →Drive corrective action from containment and root cause through verified design, material, process, or supplier correction.

• →Maintain reliability models, failure-mode registers, test reports, and release evidence that remain traceable across machine revisions.

• Bachelor's degree in mechanical, electrical, materials, aerospace, or reliability engineering, or equivalent practical experience developing reliability, qualification, environmental, or structural tests for physical hardware.

• Direct ownership of an instrumented test system, including load definition, fixture design, sensor selection, data acquisition, uncertainty, correlation, and controlled technical reporting in Python, MATLAB, or an equivalent environment.

• Working knowledge of fatigue, fracture, wear, thermal behavior, vibration, statistics, and accelerated-life test design.

• Demonstrated failure investigation that identified a physical root cause and closed with a verified design or process correction.

• Ability to read CAD, drawings, tolerances, specifications, and bills of material well enough to challenge a test article's configuration.

• Robotics, aerospace, automotive, industrial equipment, or other mobile electromechanical systems.

• HALT, HASS, fatigue rigs, environmental chambers, shaker systems, ingress testing, or field-to-lab correlation.

• Reliability growth, Weibull analysis, design of experiments, fault-tree analysis, or supplier qualification.

This on-site El Segundo role spends substantial time with physical hardware, instrumented fixtures, and failure teardowns. You will own test safety and carry failures from controlled reproduction through verified closure.

After submitting your application, we review your portfolio and any exceptional work you've shipped. If your application demonstrates the caliber we seek, you'll enter our interview process, which is designed for speed and substance. We aim to complete it within one week from start to finish.

GRAM expects deep trust and ownership from its people, and we begin by extending the same to candidates. We treat your information, prior work, and conversations with discretion.