Senior Manager, Field Quality

Base; Austin (TX); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Base, a next-generation power company, seeks a Senior Manager of Field Quality in Austin to own fleet health, triage returns, and drive fixes into design and our supplier base. You will lead a team of field quality, failure analysis, and test engineers, and guide critical root-cause investigations across thousands to hundreds of thousands of units.

You will build dashboards and use Grafana, SQL/BigQuery, and Python to uncover trends, quantify risk, and prioritize actions.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Materials, Physics, or related field.
• 4+ years in field quality, failure analysis, or design engineering, including 3+ years leading engineers.
• Experience with field-deployed hardware at scale and driving issues to closure.
• Strong hardware fundamentals in electronics or battery systems.
• Triage instinct and data-driven decision-making.
• Proficiency with Grafana, SQL/BigQuery, and Python.

Responsibilities

• Own fleet return rate; set targets and report real numbers.
• Lead and grow field quality, failure analysis, and test engineers.
• Drive root cause to closure; oversee investigations and actions.
• Make field calls: swaps, firmware mitigations, retrofit campaigns.
• Turn field failures into design changes with evidence.
• Own dashboards and Pareto analyses to track defects and costs.
• Partner with suppliers on 8D/CAPA and scorecards.
• Own the FA lab; develop tooling to recreate failures.
• Manage cost of poor quality including warranty spend and truck rolls.

Skills

Field quality leadership

Root cause analysis

Data analysis

Python

SQL/BigQuery

Grafana

Supplier management

Executive briefing

Electrical/battery systems

Education

Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Materials, Physics, or related field

Tools

Grafana

SQL/BigQuery

Python

Job description

About Base

Base is America's next-generation power company. We’re rebuilding the foundation of modern civilization- electricity- by deploying a vast network of distributed batteries that is transforming today’s fragile, centralized grid into a resilient and abundant system. We are engineers, operators, and creatives solving some of the most complex, interdisciplinary challenges of our time.

About the Role

We're looking for a Senior Manager of Field Quality to own what happens after hardware ships. You'll lead the team that watches fleet health, triages returns, finds root cause, and drives fixes into design and into our supply base.

This is the feedback half of the loop. Reliability test tells us what we think will break. The field tells us what actually breaks - usually in a way the test protocol didn't anticipate. Your job is to see it early, sort out what matters, and get it fixed.

You'll build the team as the fleet scales from thousands of units to hundreds of thousands.

What You'll Do

• Own fleet return rate. Set targets, report the real numbers, and be accountable when a failure mode starts trending.

• Lead and grow the team. Hire and develop field quality, failure analysis, and test engineers and technicians. Set the technical bar.

• Drive root cause to closure. Field signal, RMA triage, teardown, failure recreation, corrective action, verification in the fleet. Personally lead the investigations that matter.

• Make the field calls. Swap, pull, stop ship, firmware mitigation, retrofit campaign. Own the analysis and the execution.

• Fix it in design. Turn field failures into design changes with evidence. Bring the field's data into design reviews and hold the change through implementation.

• Own the data. Dashboards, failure taxonomy, and Paretos that say what is actually breaking and at what rate. The Pareto is only worth anything if the failure coding is honest.

• Partner on supplier performance. Close loop with supplier industrialization on 8D/CAPA, and scorecards.

• Own the FA lab. Build the tooling and methods to recreate field failures and confirm fixes.

• Manage cost of poor quality. Warranty spend, truck rolls, and scrap are engineering metrics.

What You'll Bring

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Materials, Physics, or a related field.

• 4+ years in field quality, failure analysis, or design engineering, including 3+ years leading engineers.

• Experience with field-deployed hardware at scale - you've owned a fleet, caught a failure mode in the data, and driven it to closure.

• Strong hardware fundamentals in electronics, battery systems, thermal systems, or complex electromechanical systems. You can hold your own in a teardown and argue about failure physics.

• Triage instinct: given a pile of broken parts and a noisy dataset, you can say what to fix first and defend it.

• Comfortable with Grafana, SQL/BigQuery, and Python to build systems and help engineers build systems that make intelligent use of data.

• Experience driving supplier corrective actions and holding suppliers to schedule and result.

• Judgment on high-stakes field decisions where acting and waiting both cost real money.

• You can brief an exec on fleet risk in five minutes and debug a PCBA with an engineer for five hours.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Battery Energy Storage Systems, inverters, or other grid-connected power hardware.

• Scaling a field quality function alongside a fast-growing fleet.

• Safety-critical hardware, UL/NFPA compliance, or field safety escalations.

• Hands-on failure analysis: cross-sectioning, X-ray, thermal imaging, materials characterization.

About the Team

The Hardware Reliability team ensures our equipment exceeds engineering and reliability standards through rigorous mechanical, electrical, and environmental testing at the component, sub-assembly, and system levels. When we find failure points, we leverage data-driven insights to identify root causes and provide actionable improvements and mitigations. We act as a tight feedback loop for the design team, accelerating product maturity and ensuring we deliver a stellar experience for our members.

Please note: Base is a startup, which means priorities shift and evolve quickly. Your role may expand or change based on the needs of the business at any given time, so the responsibilities listed may not be exhaustive.

Our Values

• First Principles Thinking: Question assumptions. Principles > rules.

• Operate at Base Pace: Focus on what matters, act quickly, and learn by doing.

• Give & Get Feedback: Be direct, be humble, and maintain a growth mindset.

• Everyone's an Owner: Follow through on commitments and own results.

• Strong Opinions, Loosely Held: Drive clarity and make calls with imperfect information.

• Committed to the Mission: Rebuilding the grid is a big challenge. We work hard because we care deeply about the impact we’re creating. We work in-person. It's not a 9-to-5. We are all-in.

• Fun & Optimism Coexist with Grit: Collaboration and celebration coincide with the intensity of building real things.

Do the best work of your life at Base.