Senior Director Product Reliability

Bloom Energy, a solid oxide fuel cell company, is looking for a Senior Director Product Reliability to lead its reliability team. This individual should be a dynamic professional, with a strategic view of reliability and its importance and impact on a companies performance, who is looking for a rewarding future in one of today's most exciting technologies. This leader will be responsible for directing the reliability engineering group and cross functional engineering efforts to implement design for Reliability into new product development as well as to drive continuous improvement of fuel cell technology to improve reliability and life and to minimize degradation. This role is the most senior reliability role in Bloom and will be the primary person to represent Bloom's reliability practices and performance in customer facing meetings. This leader will ensure a continuous focus on meeting customer expectations and driving reduction of service costs via system and part reliability and life improvements.

Location: This position will be based in either Sunnyvale, CA or Newark, DE.

Role and Responsibilities:

Product Development

• Lead team in defining and implementing processes to assure the performance, reliability and availability of new fuel cell systems development [Design for Reliability (DFR), Design for Six Sigma (DFSS)]
  • Support creation of System level DFMEAs and mitigation plans to address high risk items.
  • Work with product development teams to develop system and component test plans to validate performance, quality & reliability.
  • Support the development of advanced HALT and ALT fuel cell and hot box tests to accelerate the validation of product changes and to evaluate the effects on product durability and reliability.
  • Development of fault injection test plans to evaluate the system performance to detect and manage faults and failures effectively while protecting the system from damage.
  • Track progress to retire risks identified through program phase gate execution and provide direction on acceptance of phase gate closure or not.
  • Monitor and evaluate system performance for Beta systems operating in customer sites.
• Direct and mentor reliability team members to participate as core members of product development teams to assure full attention is given and processes are in place to design and release highly reliable fuel cell products.
• Evaluate and provide qualification plan guidance and approval for cost reduction projects to assure there will be no adverse impact on product reliability or life.
• Lead reliability aspects of all Configuration Control Boards.

Reliability and Availability Modeling

• Development of Reliability Block Diagrams (RBDs) and resulting reliability models to roll up system reliability projections and to allocate reliability goals from systems level to components.
• Support site-specific modeling of reliability and availability for Microgrid sites.
• Creation of product degradation models to predict fleet reliability life, and availability performance for use to model field service costs over extended contract terms.

Field Reliability Analysis, Root Cause & Improvement

• Maintain reliability goals and metrics for existing and new products to report regularly on progress to reach product reliability and availability objectives.
• Lead systems and component reliability analysis to monitor continuous improvement efforts and to identify top priorities for reliability improvement efforts.
• Lead or support root cause analysis of field failures and design improvements using Six Sigma, 8 Disciplines (8D) or other disciplined methods.
• Act as the field services champion for all matters related to reliability and fuel cell life.

Customer Field Reliability Analysis, Root Cause & Improvement

• Act as Subject Matter Expert in all customer facing interactions that require a reliability input
• Provide all reliability and availability modelling and reporting to support the National and International Sales process.

Skills and Experience:

• MS in Engineering discipline with minimum 15 years of reliability engineering experience.
• Proven track record in leading product reliability efforts for complex systems development.
• Experience leading engineering and cross-functional product development teams.
• Experience developing accelerated life and HALT test plans to evaluate the robustness of electrical and mechanical components.
• Extensive experience in the application of reliability methods including DFMEA, Fault Tree Analysis (FTA), Reliability Block Diagrams (RBD), System Reliability Modelling, Markov Modelling, Monte Carlo Analysis, Weibull and other reliability Distribution Modeling.
• Knowledge of fuel cell or other alternative energy products a plus.
• Strong PC and data analysis skills with specific experience using JMP, Minitab or other statistical analysis applications.
• Systems engineering and test skills in development of complex systems desired.
• Exceptional communication skills, both written and verbal, including executive presentations.
• Experience leading cross-functional teams in the solution of complex issues.

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