Reliability Engineering

Natus Sensory Inc.; Oakville; Hybrid; CAD 110,000 - 140,000; Full time

Job summary

Natus Medical is seeking an experienced Reliability Engineer to lead product reliability activities across hardware, firmware, software, and systems. You will translate use cases, design failures, and field feedback into measurable reliability objectives and testing strategies.

From prototype to commercialization, you will own methodologies, planning, and technical evidence that support product reliability and service-life strategies across the organization.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in an engineering discipline related to reliability and product development.
• 7+ years in product reliability engineering for multi-disciplinary hardware/software systems.
• Experience applying DFMEA, reliability testing plans, and service-life concepts.
• Strong knowledge of reliability statistics, Weibull analyses, and life-data methods.

Responsibilities

• Lead cross-functional reliability planning across hardware, firmware, software, and service teams.
• Develop and maintain reliability test strategies with acceptance criteria and sample sizes.
• Lead advanced reliability testing, including endurance, environmental, and fault-injection tests.
• Support failure analysis and root-cause investigations to drive DFx improvements.
• Shape organization-wide reliability programs and best practices.

Skills

Cross-functional collaboration

Statistical analysis

Reliability planning

Root-cause analysis

Test automation

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Mechatronics/Reliability/Electrical/Computer Science/Systems Engineering

Tools

Oscilloscopes

Data acquisition systems

Spectrum analyzers

Jama

Jira

Git/GitHub

Job description

About the Opportunity

Location: Hybrid: Oakville, Canada

At Natus Medical, product reliability is essential to delivering medical technology that healthcare professionals can depend on.

We are seeking an experienced Reliability Engineer to lead product reliability activities and help ensure our neurology medical devices and applications consistently deliver their intended performance throughout their expected service life.

This is a highly collaborative, technically influential role spanning mechanical, electrical, firmware, software, and integrated systems. You'll partner closely with Engineering, Verification Test, Quality, Service, and Manufacturing teams to transform product requirements, potential failure modes, and real-world field feedback into measurable reliability objectives, effective testing strategies, and long-term product service-life strategies.

From early prototype development through formal Reliability Verification, Design Transfer, and commercialization, you'll take ownership of the methodologies, planning, analysis, and technical evidence that support product reliability.

If you're passionate about solving complex engineering challenges, improving product performance, and building reliability into every stage of product development, this is an opportunity to make a meaningful impact.

What You'll Do

Lead Reliability Strategy & Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Lead cross-functional product reliability planning across Hardware, Firmware, Software, Systems Engineering, Quality, Manufacturing, and Service teams.

• Translate expected use cases and corner cases, product requirements, Design Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (dFMEA), expected product service life, and historical data (lessons learned, manufacturing, service, and field complaints) into measurable reliability objectives for New Product Introductions (NPI).

• Develop and maintain product reliability test strategies, equipment requirements, acceptance criteria, and sample sizes aligned with prototype build plans, supported by corresponding statistical confidence and reliability targets.

Develop Advanced Reliability Testing & Validation Methods

• Lead the development of standardized and automated reliability test methods and systems to evaluate hardware durability (environmental, mechanical, and electrical stresses), signal quality and data integrity, interface reliability, long-duration and endurance performance, fault injection and recovery, and system-level robustness across hardware, firmware, software applications, and cloud infrastructure.

• Develop and apply appropriate accelerated testing models for electro-mechanical systems and strategies to demonstrate expected product service life.

Turn Reliability Insights Into Product Improvements

• Support failure analysis and root-cause investigations, ensuring findings are translated into DfX process improvements across requirements, procurement, design, testing, or manufacturing.

• Partner with Service teams to develop and maintain product Service Plans based on reliability outcomes, including expected failure modes, maintenance and inspection requirements, service intervals, repair/replacement strategies, and service-life considerations.

• Lead formal, program-level Reliability and Service Technical Reviews.

Shape Reliability Excellence Across the Organization

• Provide technical leadership in developing and advancing organization-wide reliability programs, establishing standardized methodologies, processes, and best practices while driving cross-functional adoption throughout the product lifecycle.

What You'll Bring

Required Qualifications

Education & Professional Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in Mechatronics Engineering, Reliability Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Systems Engineering, or a related engineering discipline.

• 7+ years of experience in product reliability engineering for complex, multidisciplinary products incorporating hardware, firmware, software, and system-level interfaces in industries such as medical devices, automotive, aerospace, or consumer electronics.

Reliability Engineering Expertise

• Strong knowledge and practical application of reliability standards, including IEC 62308 and IEC 61078, and reliability engineering principles and methodologies, including:

  • Bathtub curve, failure-rate characteristics and metrics (FIT, operating hours, MTTF, and MTBF).

  • Probability distributions and reliability functions.

  • Weibull analysis and life-data analysis.

  • Reliability block diagrams and reliability allocation.

  • Reliability prediction and expected service-life estimation.

  • Confidence and reliability (C/R) intervals determination.

• Experience selecting and applying accelerated testing models, such as Arrhenius, Eyring, Coffin-Manson, inverse power law, or other physics-of-failure models appropriate to the identified failure mechanisms.

• Strong multidisciplinary engineering background with the ability to understand, challenge, and guide reliability engineering and test activities.

• Demonstrated experience developing and executing product Reliability Plans and risk-based reliability strategies throughout the product development lifecycle.

Testing, Automation & Technical Investigation

• Experience defining and leading long-duration, stress, endurance, environmental, fault-injection, robustness, and system-level reliability testing.

• Hands-on experience using hardware laboratory instruments, including function generators, oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, data acquisition systems, and spectrum/signal analyzers.

• Experience developing automated test systems, including test scripts for embedded firmware and software applications, to support stress testing, long-duration testing, corner-case evaluation, and failure recovery.

• Demonstrated experience leading failure analysis and root-cause investigations involving multidisciplinary and intermittent product failures.

Technical Leadership & Problem-Solving

• Ability to interpret complex technical and statistical results and translate them into engineering decisions, risk assessments, and actionable recommendations.

• Strong hands-on technical capabilities and demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional technical investigations and influence Design for Reliability (DfR) engineering decisions and service strategies without direct authority.

What Will Set You Apart

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience applying advanced firmware/software reliability methods, including automated regression testing, resource and stress testing, fault injection, error handling and recovery, and hardware/firmware/software (HW/FW/SW) integration testing. Familiarity with development and test management tools such as Jama, Jira, Git, and GitHub.

• Experience testing the reliability and resilience of software applications (e.g., Android) or cloud infrastructure (e.g., Microsoft Azure), including network interruption, service restart and recovery, data synchronization, storage/database failures, backup and rollback, or similar resilience testing.

Make an Impact With Natus Medical

This is an opportunity to bring your technical expertise, problem-solving skills, and leadership to complex medical technology that needs to perform reliably throughout its service life.

You'll have the opportunity to influence product design, strengthen testing methodologies, collaborate with multidisciplinary engineering teams, and help establish reliability practices that support both current and future products.