Senior Hardware QA Engineer – Rugged IoT Reliability & Automation

Workshop Hiring; Austin (TX); On-site; USD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Health insurance

Dental insurance

Vision insurance

Paid family leave

Unlimited PTO

Team culture

Ownership

Job summary

Drover, an Austin-based startup building a solar-powered, collar-free virtual fencing ear tag, seeks a device QA / Test Engineer to safeguard reliability across years in field conditions. You’ll design test plans, create fixtures, run environmental and reliability tests, and report results to engineering leadership from day one.

This high-ownership role offers growth as we scale from prototypes to production, with opportunities to stand up a QA function, travel to ranch environments, and partner

Qualifications

• Meaningful experience in hardware/device test engineering, QA, or reliability validation for physical products.
• Build automation fixtures or DAQ/instrumentation systems from scratch.
• Strong data analysis and reporting skills to translate test data into ship/no-ship decisions.

Responsibilities

• Own the test strategy for the Drover ear tag, from component-level verification through full-unit environmental and reliability testing.
• Help design and manage environmental and reliability tests — thermal cycling, ingress (IP-rating), UV/solar exposure, tumble, impact/drop, vibration, and accelerated life testing (e.g. HALT).
• Build bespoke test rigs, fixtures, and data acquisition setups to automate and scale testing across hundreds of units.
• Write test plans that trace directly back to product and reliability requirements, and deliver clear pass/fail evidence to engineering leadership.
• Partner with hardware, firmware, and our contract manufacturer to catch failure modes early, rather than at end-of-line.
• Maintain calibration records, test versioning, and full traceability across procedures and equipment.
• Analyze test data and turn it into clear, actionable recommendations for design and manufacturing decisions.
• Help stand up quality processes and test infrastructure that scale as we move from seed-stage prototypes to commercial production volume.
• Help with early customer support to resolve early issues, high willingness to put on boots and travel out to ranchers to help debug.

Skills

hardware testing

test automation

data analysis

in-person collaboration

Tools

DAQ/instrumentation

Job description

Drover, an Austin-based startup building a solar-powered, collar-free virtual fencing ear tag, seeks a device QA / Test Engineer to safeguard reliability across years in field conditions. You’ll design test plans, create fixtures, run environmental and reliability tests, and report results to engineering leadership from day one.

This high-ownership role offers growth as we scale from prototypes to production, with opportunities to stand up a QA function, travel to ranch environments, and partner