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# Hardware Test Engineer

- **Company:** Specter Incorporated
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA, United States
- **Experience:** Experienced
- **Contract:** Permanent contract
- **Skills:** Artificial Intelligence, Cyber Security, Computer Engineering, Software Debugging, Linux, Firmware, Python (Programming Language), Test Data, Hardware Testing
- **Published:** November 5, 2026
- **Apply:** https://www.careerbuilder.com/job-details/hardware-test-engineer-san-francisco-ca--6a6fc006-cbf7-45c4-88ab-75ee107ead1e

## About the Role

Hardware Quality Assurance, Computer Engineering, Automation, Test Plan/Schedule, Test Fixtures, Artificial Intelligence (AI) Agents, Materials Tracking, Computer Security, Wireless Communications, Electricity, 2+ years of hardware validation or test - Reliability, qualification, or systems test for embedded hardware products.

 - Bench skills - Fluent with oscilloscopes, multimeters, logic analyzers, and power analyzers for bring-up and debug; thermal chambers and shakers are familiar territory too.

 - Fixture hands - You've built or modified test fixtures and harnesses to get a unit connected, stressed, and measured.

 - Reliability and stress testing - You've run mechanical, thermal, environmental, and abuse tests and can interpret what the results mean for the design.

 - Structured root cause - You debug methodically across hardware, firmware, and system boundaries-teardowns included-and you don't declare victory on a hunch.

 - Python and Linux - You drive instruments, sequence test runs, and make campaigns reproducible end to end-from a shell. Our products and rigs all run Linux; SSH and logs are home turf.

 - Data rigor - You treat test data statistically: distributions, margins, trends across campaigns.

 - Cross-functional by default - You work daily with EE, firmware, mechanical, and manufacturing without needing a process to make it happen.

Bonus Skills

 - Production test systems - End-of-line stations, pogo-pin fixtures, or test that runs at production rate.

 - EMC exposure - Pre-compliance testing or supporting formal certification.

 - Manufacturing test - Production-line test experience or the validation-to-manufacturing handoff.

## Description

Your job is to build the machine that hunts down our hardware's weaknesses and gets that data in front of the people who can fix them. You're the hands-on end of it: test plans, fixtures, automation-and when the machine catches something, you chase it to root cause., Given a product and its requirements, you build the test plan, build the fixture, run the campaign, and script it so the next run is faster. When a unit fails-on the bench, in a chamber, or in the field-you own it across mechanical, electrical, and firmware boundaries until it's understood and fixed.

Concretely, here are some of the things you'll work on in the first few months:

 - Plan and run campaigns - Turn product requirements into concrete test plans, then execute: set up fixtures, run chambers, stress hardware to its limits, collect the data, write the report.

 - Automate - Script thermal, shock, and vibration campaigns in Python against instruments and fixtures so every run is reproducible.

 - Root cause analysis - Chase failures to ground: tear down failed units, isolate the cause across hardware, firmware, and mechanical, and verify the fix. What you find inside reshapes the tests.