Associate Director, Systems Test Engineering

Boston Dynamics is looking for an Associate Director of Systems Test Engineering to join our Systems Engineering, Integration, and Test (SEIT) Department. We are looking for a technical leader and manager who will advance state-of-the-art verification, validation, and test (VV&T) systems for the Atlas humanoid robot product ecosystem. The ideal candidate has significant experience (in priority order) with:

• Intuitive sense of how to create test systems highly representative of product usage
• Setting risk-based verification priorities to mitigate program technical risks ASAP
• Ensuring comprehensive product verification planning & execution
  • Analysis, simulation, subjective, empirical, statistical
  • Benchtop, open-lab full-robot, in-factory/field 
• Method development
• Requirements quality assurance

This role is responsible for hiring and providing hands-on technical leadership of a highly-technical growing team that includes mechanical, electrical and software expertise.  The Associate Director of Systems Test reports to the SEIT Director and helps BD rapidly develop, and qualify for launch into mass production, the most capable full-body-manipulating humanoid robotic product in the world. 

Boston Dynamics is a world leader in mobile robots, tackling some of the toughest robotics challenges. For years, our awe-inspiring viral videos on YouTube have shown the world what remarkably capable robots can do. Now we are quickly becoming a recognized leader in automation solutions for industrial applications and warehouse logistics.  

How you will make an impact:

• Recruit, technically mentor, & develop a high-performing team with a healthy culture.
• Develop verification engineering capabilities for BD, prioritizing capability growth where most critical for program success.
• Action-oriented approach with exceptional execution.
• Hands-on test method development, fixture design, execution, and analysis, along with their team.
• Lead overall program Design Verification Planning and Reporting (DVP&R) across a complex product ecosystem, involving rapidly evolving state-of-the-art designs, with cross-functionally distributed responsibilities.
• Ensure exceptional product system requirement quality to enable exceptional VV&T.  Ensure clear bidirectional traceability between engineering requirements, verification plans, and results.
• Drive right-weight SEIT for optimal program performance, managing organizational evolution of an innovative, and relatively new, department  within BD.
• Support system characterization and benchmarking activities.
• Interface with other VV&T org units around BD to leverage shared approaches and build 

Required Skills & Experience:

• Familiarity doing V&V in a formal context. Desire to teach and instill best practices that will scale to the complexity of the product we’re building.
• Expert in translating tough-to-specify performance requirements into practical tests.  
• Track record of specifying unprecedented test methods and appropriately robust test systems that yield repeatable and reproducible test results, finding failures at subsystem levels prior to system integration.
• Resource planning, credibly advocating needs to leadership, and executing according to plan.
• Exceptional communication, conflict management, and interpersonal skills. 
• 10+ years of test engineering experience.
• 5+ years leading cross-disciplinary teams in the development and verification of robotic or similarly complex embedded systems.
• 5+ years directly managing managers, engineers, and technicians.  
• Experience across at least one mass-produced product lifecycle.  Knowledge of what it takes to deliver innovative, robust, and reliable products into high-volume production.

Desired Skills & Experience:

• Reliability & robustness, including DFMEA, DVP&R, DOE, trouble-shooting, failure analysis, root cause assessment, and 8D problem solving.
• Statistical data analysis & visualization.
• Test fixture design, build, programming, bring-up, and prove-out.  Build vs buy evaluation.  Contractor and supplier management.
• Test method development including accelerated life, fault insertion, kinematic verification, dynamometers, environmental extremes, shock & vibe, EMC, ESD, HALT, HASS.
• Internal lab management, facility space planning, & outsourcing to external test labs.
• Safety-critical system development and related documentation rigor.
• Regulatory compliance
• Development of repeatable test performance correlating with subjective customer preference
• Highly relevant design domains, including BLDC motors, controllers, gear trains, bearings, encoders, force transducers, inertial sensors, cameras, user interfaces, 2-way audio, PCBAs, wire harnesses, radios, compute, batteries & BMS, end effectors, IP67 structural housings, mechanisms, manufacturing IT & other infrastructure.
• Experience in automotive product development is highly desirable.
• Software tools including Jama, Jira, Testrails, Google Suite, Python, C, ClaudeCode, Matlab, Arena, Altium, Catia, Mujoco, Raspberry Pi, Arduino.
• Behavior & controls software:  AI / ML / VLAs, perception, planning, controls, diagnostics, fault management.
• SQA / CI / CD.
• Simulation, including HIL.
• Machine shop fabrication technologies and rapid-prototyping methods.

We are interested in every qualified candidate who is eligible to work in the United States. However, we are not able to sponsor visas for this position.

The salary range for this position will be clearly stated in the job posting as required by Massachusetts law. The base pay range for this position is between $178,,000 - $221,000. Base pay will depend on multiple individualized factors including, but not limited to internal equity, job related knowledge, skills and experience. This range represents a good faith estimate of compensation at the time of posting.

Boston Dynamics will never ask you to divulge your personal financial or account information as part of its recruiting process.

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