Reliability Engineer

Has your car ever broken down in the middle of nowhere? Has your computer ever crashed after its warranty expired? Has your furnace ever quit in the dead of winter, or your air conditioning in the thick of summer?

If you answered, “Yes,” you know that the best products aren’t always the coolest, newest, or priciest products. Instead, they’re the most reliable.

Smart companies know that, which is why many of them employ a Reliability Engineer who’s charged with ensuring the long-term performance of their manufactured products.

When you’re a Reliability Engineer, your job is quality control, as you’re paid by manufacturing companies to analyze the ability of their products to perform their required functions under certain conditions for a certain amount of time. To do that, you first play the part of Mathematician, calculating the probability that products and their various components will malfunction. Next, you play the part of Detective, studying schematics and workflows for potential flaws. Finally, you play the role of Quality Assurance Engineer, testing products’ reliability, then improving it by modifying their designs and/or manufacturing processes.

Because you’re paid to find and fix products’ defects, you’re a lot like a Safety Engineer. There is one major difference, however: A Safety Engineer fixes flaws in order to protect consumers and prevent accidents, which is accomplished by ensuring compliance with industry and government regulations. A Reliability Engineer, on the other hand, fixes flaws to protect the bottom line, which means preventing incidents that could cost the company money, such as product recalls, repairs, refunds, and re-engineering. At the end of the day, therefore, you’re not just looking out for your company’s products; you’re also watching out for its reputation and revenues.