Sr. Failure Analysis Engineer, SPICE Lab (Seattle)

Job description

SPICE lab (a Seattle-based branch of Amazon's Lab126 subsidiary) is a research and development group partnering with Amazon's most ambitious hardware organizations. SPICE lab supports Amazon's growing portfolio of hardware programs including Prime Air, Leo, Mechatronics, AWS, Annapurna, Lab126 Devices and others. If you are passionate about building the future and want to take part in developing ideas from concept to production, consider joining the SPICE lab team!

The Role

The Failure Analysis team leverages science and engineering to improve product reliability and safety, accelerate innovation, and make a direct impact on design through high-quality analysis and expert interpretation of data. This position will support the Annapurna Labs organization by investigating failure mechanisms in enterprise compute and networking assemblies, including thermal solutions. You will develop and execute world-class failure analysis outcomes utilizing electrical fault isolation techniques, physical analysis, spectroscopy, and chemical characterization.

A majority of time will be spent in a lab environment, so demonstrated enthusiasm for hands-on work developing and executing lab procedures is key. You will act as the formal liaison between SPICE lab and the Annapurna Labs' cross-functional teams, coordinating failure analysis campaigns, triaging devices from reliability qualifications, and providing guidance on manufacturing and design best practices to drive reliability improvements at scale.

Key job responsibilities

• Conduct failure analysis utilizing electrical fault isolation techniques, physical analysis, spectroscopy, and chemical characterization.
• Consultation on corrective actions, method development, design/manufacturing best practices cross-functionally to drive measurable improvements to hardware reliability.
• Interface with Senior and Principal engineering staff to identify and execute lab method development spanning enterprise compute assemblies, including power distribution, compute, networking, and thermal management components.

A day in the life

You will split time between your desk in our office area and the lab facility down the hallway. You'll have a queue of failure analysis investigations at various stages, tracked using our Issue Management application and provide Annapurna Labs stakeholders periodic updates on progress. Your projects will culminate in failure analysis reports which you'll use to build consensus around corrective actions for the business to take.

You will also undertake special projects to innovate on behalf of customers and expand the Product Integrity team's knowledge base, developing new methodologies to drive materials selection, design, and operational improvements.

About the team

SPICE lab supports three main functions

Reliability Testing, Failure Analysis, and Materials Characterization. We frequently work together because conducting thorough root cause analysis is valuable for understanding and remedying any issues uncovered as part of a program's reliability testing plan. Likewise, the reliability testing team can help to reproduce failure mechanisms, helping to validate Failure Analysis team's hypotheses. Many of the same techniques are valuable in measuring materials properties or other figures of merit in materials selection exercises.