Staff Solar Field Reliability Engineer

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Staff Solar Field Reliability Engineer

| Job Category | Engineering & Information Technology | | Location | Palo Alto, California | | Req. ID | 267810 | | Job Type | Full-time |

What to Expect

Tesla Energy operates the largest distributed fleet of residential solar systems on the planet. Our solar portfolio spans hundreds of thousands of systems across multiple generations of inverters, panels, and gateways, both Tesla-designed and third-party hardware. This fleet generates terabytes of telemetry data daily, creating an unparalleled opportunity to understand how solar hardware performs across diverse climates, grid conditions, and usage patterns over years of operation.You will lead the Solar Service Engineering team's day-to-day operations, coordinating engineers responsible for fleet health monitoring, automated diagnostics, and field quality across Tesla's full solar portfolio. Beyond your own technical workstream, you will drive the team's operational rhythm, set priorities, coordinate across workstreams, and ensure critical issues get the right visibility. You will have direct visibility to senior leadership, the autonomy to shape reliability strategy, and the opportunity to build something meaningful at scale.

If you are energized by both solving hard technical problems and making the people around you more effective, this is the role.

What You’ll Do

• Lead the Team: Facilitate standups, drive cross-workstream prioritization, surface blockers, synthesize status for engineering leadership
• Grow the Team: develop and mentor engineers across experience levels, drive cross-training across the team to build shared knowledge of Tesla and third-party solar products, diagnostics, and fleet tooling
• Communicate with Leadership: Produce clear, concise summaries for leadership on team priorities, active investigations, and fleet health, proactively flagging risks and decisions needed
• Field Escalations and Product Quality: Own critical / top product issue escalations, thermal event response, drive the field quality workstream, raise and advance hardware failure investigations, and NPI field quality oversight
• Lead Failure Analysis Investigations: from identification through root cause to countermeasure implementation, coordinating with vendors, FA/FQ labs and teams, and design teams to close the loop on hardware failures
• Drive corrective actions to closure: design changes, manufacturing process improvements, firmware mitigations, or field service campaigns, tracking implementation and confirming efficacy
• Oversee firmware mitigation deployments: track rollout status, monitor pre/post field performance, and share results with stakeholders
• Provide Tier 3 technical support: for complex solar failures and safety-critical escalations, communicating findings clearly to both engineering and non-engineering audiences

What You’ll Bring

• 8+ years of experience in hardware reliability, field quality, systems engineering, or energy service engineering and 2+ years of experience leading or coordinating a team of 5+ engineers (formal management, tech lead, or team coordination role)
• Demonstrated expertise in structured investigation methodologies: 8D, FMEA, fault tree analysis, Weibull analysis, or equivalent root cause techniques
• Strong data analysis skills: ability to query large fleet datasets (SQL, Python) to identify failure trends, calculate failure rates, and quantify field impact
• Experience producing executive-level technical reports and presenting complex reliability findings to senior leadership
• Track record of driving corrective actions to closure across cross-functional teams without direct authority
• Experience with solar inverter platforms (SolarEdge, Enphase, Fronius, SMA, ABB/Solectria) or Tesla Energy products (Powerwall, Solar Inverter)
• Hands-on experience with power electronics hardware: inverters, DC-DC converters, gate drivers, capacitors, thermal management systems
• Background in solar panel reliability: hotspot analysis, degradation characterization, EL/IR testing, cell-level failure modes
• Familiarity with UL1741, IEEE 1547, or other grid-tied inverter safety standards
• Experience building team operating processes from scratch: standups, escalation workflows, investigation tracking systems

Compensation and Benefits

Benefits

• Along with competitive pay, as a full-time Tesla employee, you are eligible for the following benefits at day 1 of hire:

• Medical plans > plan options with $0 payroll deduction

• Family-building, fertility, adoption and surrogacy benefits

• Dental (including orthodontic coverage) and vision plans, both have options with a $0 paycheck contribution

• Company Paid (Health Savings Accounts) HSA Contribution when enrolled in the High-Deductible medical plan with HSA

• Healthcare and Dependent Care Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA)

• 401(k) with employer match, Employee Stock Purchase Plans, and other financial benefits

• Company paid Basic Life, AD&D

• Short-term and long-term disability insurance (90 day waiting period)

• Employee Assistance Program

• Sick and Vacation time (Flex time for salary positions, Accrued hours for Hourly positions), and Paid Holidays

• Back-up childcare and parenting support resources

• Voluntary benefits to include: critical illness, hospital indemnity, accident insurance, theft & legal services, and pet insurance

• Weight Loss and Tobacco Cessation Programs

• Tesla Babies program

• Commuter benefits

• Employee discounts and perks program

• Expected Compensation

• $152,000 - $288,000/annual salary + cash and stock awards + benefits

Pay offered may vary depending on multiple individualized factors, including market location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. The total compensation package for this position may also include other elements dependent on the position offered. Details of participation in these benefit plans will be provided if an employee receives an offer of employment.

Tesla is an Equal Opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to any factor, including veteran status and disability status, protected by applicable federal, state or local laws.

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