System Reliability Engineer

Rocket Lab; Hawthorne (CA); On-site; USD 110,000 - 250,000; Full time

Job summary

CHAOS Inc. is seeking a System Reliability Engineer to join their R&D team. The role involves managing product reliability, conducting risk assessments, and developing maintenance strategies, all within a highly collaborative and dynamic environment. This is an exciting opportunity to innovate at the forefront of aerospace and defense technologies.

Benefits

Health Benefits covered 100%

Free daily lunch

Unlimited PTO for exempt employees

'No meeting Fridays'

Relocation assistance

Qualifications

• 3-5 years of experience in reliability engineering or related technical role.
• Strong understanding of reliability principles and methodologies.
• Experience with RF systems and agile engineering development.

Responsibilities

• Identify and mitigate hazards and risks for mission critical systems.
• Develop System Built in Test architecture and reliability models.
• Conduct reliability investigations to optimize asset performance.

Skills

Reliability principles

FMECA analysis

Root cause analysis

Communication

Education

Bachelor’s degree in STEM

Tools

C/C++

Python

Matlab

Job description

CHAOS Inc. is a global technology company delivering next-generation capabilities to the defense and critical industrial sectors. Founded in 2022 by a seasoned leadership team, CHAOS has quickly become the place where world-class multi-disciplinary engineers come to build mission-critical technologies. CHAOS has a mission-focused culture, dedicated to solving the toughest technical challenges. Its unique agile engineering approach enables rapid prototyping, while deep partnerships with defense and industry ensure real-world solutions.

Role Overview:

• CHAOS is seeking a highly-skilled and motivated System Reliability Engineer to join our team supporting our R&D and product engineering team, overseeing and managing the reliability and maintainability of the products we are developing. This is a highly collaborative role which will allow you to work on multiple capabilities within our product offerings. As a member of our engineering team, you also have the opportunity to expand your skillset across our product families.

Responsibilities:

• Identify, evaluate, and mitigate hazards and risks associated with mission critical systems
• Develop System Built in Test (BIT) architecture and design
• Develop reliability models and performing reliability predictions
• Reliability and Maintainability Predictions, Failure Modes, Effects & Criticality Analysis (FMECA), Failure Modes & Effects Analysis (FMEA)
• Responsible for System Hazard Analysis (SHA), System Safety Assessment (SSA), and Fault Tree Analysis (FTA)
• Conduct reliability, supportability and root cause investigations to identify key failure points and/or optimize asset reliability, availability, maintainability, safety and life cycle costs
• Development of maintenance strategies and preventative, predictive, and condition-based maintenance programs
• Establish and maintaining project reliability plans and instructions
• Perform System Safety planning, hazard analyses, and design analyses
• Develop diagnostic tools and procedures

Minimum Requirements:

• Bachelor’s degree in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, or Mathematics) or another related field or equivalent work experience
• 3-5 years of experience in a reliability engineering, failure analysis, or a closely related technical role.
• Strong understanding of reliability principles and methodologies:
• Experience with FMECA analysis, BIT, Root cause analysis and debugging, and/or Systems Safety
• Understanding product life stages, from design and development to testing, production, and eventual retirement
• Experience with RF systems
• Experience and willingness to work in an agile engineering development startup
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills for collaborating with cross-functional teams, presenting findings, and documenting process

Preferred Requirements:

• Masters degree in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, or Mathematics) or another related field or equivalent work experience
• Systems engineering experience with Requirements Development, Design, and/or Integration and Test
• Experience working with defense electronic sensor systems
• Experience working with radar systems
• Proficiency in statistical methods, data analysis, and using statistical software
• Software programming experience (C/C++, Python, Matlab, etc)

Why CHAOS?

• Health Benefits: Your medical, dental and vision benefits will be 100% paid for by the company
• Additional benefits: life, FSA, HSA, 401k (+ Company match), and more
• Our Perks: free daily lunch, ‘No meeting Fridays’, unlimited PTO (for exempt employees), casual dress code
• Compensation Components: competitive base salaries, generous pre-IPO stock option grants, relocation assistance + (coming soon!) annual bonuses
• Company Size: 100 employees and counting!
• More About Us: We're building the next generation of aerospace, defense and critical industry technologies with a seasoned team of mission-focused individuals. We were founded in June 2022 and our goal is to become the platform where world-class engineers come to solve critical, real-world problems. We use agile engineering approaches which enable rapid prototyping, deep partnerships with the defense industry ensuring real-world application, and our newly-invented Coherence platform (through which we’ve made a fundamental breakthrough) improves sensor performance and decision-making in real-time. As of April 2025 we have raised $490M (including a $275M Series C at a $2B valuation) from some of the most prominent VC funds and investors including Accel, NEA, 8VC, and Valar. With a managing team that includes Epirus’ founding members (responsible for building a $1.5B company from scratch) + key drivers from Palantir (instrumental in Palantir’s growth to $1B in revenue), we are well-positioned to become one of the fastest growing companies to date!

Salary range: $110,000 - $250,000

The stated compensation range reflects only the targeted base compensation range and excludes additional earnings such as bonus, equity, and benefits. If your compensation requirements fall outside of the range, we still encourage you to apply. The salary range for this role is an estimate based on a range of compensation factors, inclusive of base salary only. Actual salary offer may vary based on (but not limited to) work experience, education and/or training, critical skills, and/or business considerations.

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