Hardware Quality & Reliability Engineer – Production

Tutor Intelligence, Inc.; City of Watertown (NY); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Tutor Intelligence, Inc. is seeking its first Quality and Reliability Engineer to own the hardware quality program from the ground up. You will report to the Head of Manufacturing and have the authority to hold any robot that doesn't meet the bar.

Your first priority is returned material, containment, MRB, failure analysis and supplier RMAs, tracked in tools you build with AI. Ship and incoming quality gates come next, with up to 25% travel.

Qualifications

• Experience in hardware quality for production environments.
• Own end-to-end quality gates from design to ship.
• Willingness to travel up to 25% to customer sites and suppliers.

Responsibilities

• Own returned material: containment, MRB, failure analysis, and supplier RMAs.
• Establish and manage ship and incoming quality gates.
• Develop automated tooling and dashboards for quality metrics.
• Lead root-cause investigations and drive corrective actions.

Skills

Quality assurance

Reliability engineering

Root cause analysis

Supplier RMAs

AI tooling

Tools

MES

Job description

About Tutor

We believe general-purpose, generally-intelligent robots will be built in our lifetimes. Robots will work in our factories, move our goods, walk on our streets and eventually be in our homes. To build that future, research and deployment must work in lockstep: real-world operation must make the technology better and better technology must make deployment easier. We're looking for the thinkers, builders, and researchers who want to be part of that loop.

Our Culture

We believe that something truly special can happen when talented, motivated people work together; at Tutor, every member of our team is empowered to have real impact in everything that they do. We're characterized by both technical excellence and next-level collaboration and respect.

Why This Role Matters

Every robot we ship goes to work at a customer's site. A failure there costs us far more than one caught on our floor. We need one engineer who owns two answers: are we shipping good robots, and what is failing and why.

The Role

You're our first quality and reliability engineer: the hardware engineer dedicated to quality and reliability for production, building the function from the ground up. You report to the Head of Manufacturing and have the authority to hold any robot that doesn't meet the bar.

Your first priority is returned material: containment, MRB, failure analysis and supplier RMAs, tracked in tools you build with AI. Ship and incoming quality gates come next.

Up to 25% travel to customer sites and suppliers.

Example projects you might work on:

• A failure tracker that ties every returned robot arm joint to its serial number, build and supplier, and shows which joints fail and why
• Incoming inspection and test for refurbished robot arms before they reach the line
• A screening process for a batch of suspect control boxes, from quarantine through supplier return
• An automated ship gate that pulls test results from our MES and blocks a robot that's missing a check
• A weekly fleet quality report that Engineering, Deployment and Customer Success actually use

Why Join

• Build the function. You're our first quality and reliability hire. You set the standard, choose the tools and shape the team that grows around you.
• Real authority from day one. You report to the Head of Manufacturing and can hold any robot that doesn't meet the bar. Your call sticks.
• Hard, real failures. Robot arms, drive systems, sensors and power electronics running full shifts at customer sites. Every root cause you close shows up in the field.
• AI is how we work. You'll have the tools and the backing to automate the quality work most companies still do by hand.
• Scale with us. Go from a new production line to 1,000+ robots in the field by 2028, with quality built in from the start.

How We Work: Our Values in This Role

We hire against our values, and we'll interview you against them too. Here's what they look like in this seat:

• Love of the Game. A teardown that proves a root cause is satisfying to you, and you want the data to be airtight.
• Gumption. You don't wait for a failure to be assigned. You spot the trend, open the investigation and chase the supplier until it's closed.
• Beginner's Mindset. You question every "known issue" and every test we've always run. If the data says we're wrong, we change.
• Belief in Each Other. You hold engineers, techs and suppliers to a high bar, and you share the facts even when they're uncomfortable.
• Keep Moving Forward. You contain fast, ship what's good and keep digging on what isn't. Perfect analysis never stalls the line.
• Customer Obsession. A defect that escapes is a robot down at a customer site. You hold the line so they don't have to.