Build Reliability Engineer - Avionics
Long Beach · USD 112,340-195,552 · 2+ years experience · Full-time · Onsite · Posted Oct 19, 2026
At a glance
- Experience
- 2+ years experience
- Employment
- Full-time
- Workplace
- Onsite
- Location
- Long Beach
- Salary
- USD 112,340-195,552 · Base salary
About the role
- Vast is looking for a Build Reliability Engineer for Avionics, reporting to the Principal Build Reliability Engineer, to support the reliability of flight avionics hardware across the product lifecycle for human-rated space stations.
- In this role, you will work at the intersection of design, manufacturing, integration, and test to ensure that space systems meet high standards of safety, quality, and performance.
Responsibilities
- Own Build Reliability for avionics hardware and work centers, setting expectations for reliability, manufacturability, and build and flight readiness.
- Partner with Engineering, Manufacturing, Quality, Supply Chain, and Mission Assurance leadership to ensure robust, scalable quality and verification plans across the product lifecycle, with lessons consistently carried across programs.
- Ensure successful introduction of flight hardware by defining readiness criteria, including process qualification, manufacturability, and inspectability, and driving the retirement of build risks through production ramp-up.
- Drive maturation of internal avionics production processes, ensuring documentation, equipment, tooling, process controls, data collection, and training support consistent and streamlined execution.
- Ensure off-nominal work is performed and documented reliably, and partner with Mission Assurance to drive risk mitigations and steer response plans to severe issues.
- Provide leadership and technical direction for high-visibility issues, establishing recovery plans and aligning operations, quality, and engineering on execution.
- Collect and analyze build data to identify risk and recurring issues, lead build quality reviews, generate data-driven recommendations, and effectively influence partner teams to prioritize efforts that prevent escapes and improve reliability.
- Lead containment and root-cause investigation of high-impact Avionics-related issues, ensuring implementation and verification of robust corrective actions that address root cause and systemic contributors across Vast.
- Lead major cost of quality reduction initiatives through simplification of requirements, clearer design standards, streamlined inspection and process validation steps, and strengthened process controls.
Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree in Engineering or related field
- 2+ years of experience in manufacturing, design, quality, reliability, or related roles
- Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional initiatives
- Excellent communication and technical skills
Preferred qualifications
- Masters Degree or higher
- Experience working in aerospace, defense, or other high-reliability manufacturing environments
- Direct experience working on harness manufacturing, avionics/electromech manufacturing, or functional testing, pressure testing, and environmental testing
- Proven track record of taking ownership in projects, performing root-cause analysis and corrective actions, and influencing suppliers to drive results
- Demonstrated ability to learn new tools, processes, and technical concepts quickly
- Experience in statistical controls and methods (e.g. MSA, DOE, hypothesis testing, etc.)
- Disciplined problem-solving approach (Six Sigma, 8D, etc.)
- Working knowledge of quality systems and standards (ISO 9001, AS9100, etc.)
Benefits
- Company equity
- Medical, dental, and vision coverage for employees and dependents
- Generous paid time off, including up to 20+ days of vacation for exempt staff
- Paid parental leave
- Short and long-term disability insurance
- Life insurance
- Access to a 401(k) retirement plan
- ClassPass credits
- Personalized mental healthcare through Spring Health
- Free snacks, drip coffee and onsite barista, cold drinks, dinner meals, and subsidized lunch
Workplace
- Ability to travel up to 5%
- Ability to support mission-critical events outside normal working hours
Skills
- Harness Manufacturing
- Avionics Manufacturing
- Functional Testing
- Pressure Testing
- Environmental Testing
- MSA
- DOE
- Hypothesis Testing
- Six Sigma
- 8D
- ISO 9001
- AS9100
Show all 15 skills
- IPC 620
- IPC 610
- NASA 8739.4
