Hardware Engineering - Sustaining

Tive; Boston (MA); Hybrid; USD 100,000 - 150,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Office-based or hybrid

Competitive equity

Diversity & inclusion

Job summary

Tive is seeking a Hardware Engineering – Sustaining professional to keep in-market products reliable and improving. You will investigate hardware issues, perform root-cause analysis, and drive effective ECOs and changes across suppliers and CM partners.

Join a distributed, fast-moving team with a hybrid work option in the US. You will own field failures, support manufacturing, and help design teams prevent recurrence through structured problem solving.

Qualifications

• BS/MS in Electrical Engineering or equivalent with 4+ years in hardware sustaining, NPI, or manufacturing for high-volume electronics.
• Ability to read schematics/PCB designs and assess changes' risk.
• Experience with contract manufacturers: DFM, yield, FATP/SMT, and production issue resolution.
• Structured root-cause discipline (8D/5-Why/fishbone) and closing corrective actions with suppliers.
• Comfortable owning ambiguous, cross-cutting problems in a distributed team.

Responsibilities

• Field-issue root cause — investigate returns and field failures; drive closure with confirmed findings.
• ECO / revision management — manage engineering change orders, PCB respins, and component substitutions; maintain revision traceability across the fleet.
• Component & supplier issues — handle EOL, second-sourcing, and vendor quality escalations; author and drive supplier 8D/SCAR corrective actions (batch defects, etc.).
• Manufacturing support — support production issues, yield analysis, DFM feedback, and FATP/SMT line support; assist the CM shift for US-market products.
• RMA / refurb — own the RMA and refurbishment engineering path; feed field-failure patterns back into design and verification.
• Cross-pod triage — act as first responder for sustaining issues across all product lines, escalating to the owning pod only when new design work is required.

Skills

Electrical Engineering

Schematic & PCB review

DFM & SMT / manufacturing experience

Root-cause analysis (8D/5-Why)

Cross-functional / distributed teams

Education

BS/MS in Electrical Engineering or equivalent

Job description

At Tive, we imagine a fully-transparent world in which everything and everyone is connected. We innovate beyond what the world thought possible—so what people hold near and dear arrives on time and in full.

We believe (and live!) four core values:

• Transparency First: We make everything visible so that everyone can operate better
• Always strive to make things simpler
• We are One Team, we have each other's backs
• Relentless iteration to optimize and improve

Whether shipped by road, rail, ocean, or air, Tive reduces shipment delays, minimizes rejected loads, and decreases theft, damage, and spoilage. Our customers count on Tive to ensure that their shipments are delivered on time and in full—because every shipment matters.

As a Hardware Engineering – Sustaining engineer, you will help keep our in-market products reliable, healthy, and continuously improving throughout their lifecycle. You’ll investigate hardware issues, identify root causes, and work cross-functionally to drive effective solution

Our Ideal Candidate Must Have

• BS/MS in Electrical Engineering or equivalent, with 4+ years in hardware sustaining, NPI, or manufacturing engineering for high-volume electronics.
• Solid grasp of schematic and PCB design review — able to read a design, reason about a power tree, and assess a proposed change's risk.
• Direct experience with contract manufacturers: DFM, yield, FATP/SMT, and production issue resolution.
• Structured root-cause discipline (8D/5-Why/fishbone) and the follow-through to close corrective actions with suppliers.
• Comfortable owning ambiguous, cross-cutting problems in a distributed team

Strongly Preferred

• Low-power / battery-powered IoT hardware background; familiarity with cellular + GNSS + BLE devices.
• Hands-on with the platform silicon class: ESP32-class MCUs, cellular modems, fuel gauges and chargers, IMUs, and buck-boost regulators.
• Mandarin and/or China-based experience for CM coordination (a plus, not required).
• Experience feeding sustaining insight back into verification and design so recurring issues get designed out.

What You'll Do

• Field-issue root cause — own investigation of returns and field failures (e.g. crash-reset/brownout loops, registration failures, latent battery shorts); drive root-cause analysis to closure with clear confirmed-vs-inferred findings.
• ECO / revision management — manage engineering change orders, PCB respins, and component substitutions (e.g. converter/regulator swaps, fuel-gauge/charger changes); maintain revision traceability across the fleet.
• Component & supplier issues — handle EOL, second-sourcing, and vendor quality escalations; author and drive supplier 8D/SCAR corrective actions (batch defects, separator/assembly issues).
• Manufacturing support — support production issues, yield analysis, DFM feedback, and FATP/SMT line support; assist the CM shift for US-market products.
• RMA / refurb — own the RMA and refurbishment engineering path; feed field-failure patterns back into design and verification.
• Cross-pod triage — act as first responder for sustaining issues across all product lines, escalating to the owning pod only when new design work is required.

Compensation

$100,000 - $150,000 base salary

The specific pay offered may be influenced by a variety of factors, including the candidate’s experience, education, and skill set.

What does Tive offer?

• A chance to join what may very well turn out to be the most important company in your career.
• The autonomy and resources to build what you know how to build.
• Work with a committed global team that have each others back.
• Office-based or hybrid options. Your choice.
• Competitive equity to ensure all of our employees have a sense of ownership in the long-term success of Tive’s growth.

We celebrate diversity, and consider it key to our success as both a team and a company. We are proud to be an equal-opportunity employer, and we are committed to creating an inclusive environment of mutual respect for all employees.