Reliability Engineer

Decide what reliability toolkit this program runs on, write it down short enough that people follow it, and defend every inclusion and omission

Pick analysis depth per subsystem instead of applying one standard everywhere — some interfaces deserve a full FMECA, some deserve a one-page failure walkdown, some deserve nothing

Own the failure analyses: FMEA/FMECA, fault trees, single-point-failure identification, common-cause assessment, and the redundancy trades that follow

Work the physics of failure, not just the statistics — fatigue, thermal cycling, cryogenic effects, contamination, wear, and the failure modes peculiar to LOX and LNG service

Define what each test needs to prove, and get that instrumentation into the plan before the article is built

Run failure review and corrective action fast enough that engineers use it voluntarily

Build the lightest tooling that work: Python and version control, not an enterprise suite

Teach. The leverage is not the analyses you run, it is the engineers who start thinking about failure modes before they get to you.

5-8 years in reliability, mission assurance, or systems engineering with real reliability ownership, on hardware where failure had consequences

Command of the core methods: FMECA, fault tree analysis, common-cause analysis, allocation, Weibull and life-data analysis

The judgment to right-size. You have seen reliability process applied where it did not belong, and you have opinions about the alternative

Physics-of-failure instinct: you want to know why the part broke, not just how often parts like it break

Hands-on test experience. You have stood next to hardware, watched it misbehave, and worked the anomaly to root cause

Python sufficient to run Monte Carlos, fit life data, and build tools your teammates use without your help

Statistical honesty about small samples. When a number rests on four data points and an assumed distribution, you say so instead of quoting three significant figures

Willingness to make a call on incomplete information, state the assumptions, and revise

Bachelor's degree in engineering, or similar.

Launch vehicle or liquid rocket engine experience, especially cryogenic

Rotating machinery reliability: turbopumps, bearings, seals, dynamic environments

Propulsion or structural test experience, including instrumentation planning and data reduction

Experience standing up a reliability function from nothing

Probabilistic risk assessment or structural reliability background

Supplier quality or nonconformance experience, and the composure for a hard vendor conversation

Reusable vehicle experience: inspection, refurbishment, reliability across flights of the same article

This job description is a summary of the primary duties and responsibilities of the job and position. It is not intended to be a comprehensive or all-inclusive listing of duties and responsibilities. Contents are subject to change at Cowboy Space Corp.’s discretion.

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