Materials Characterization Engineer, SPICE Lab; Seattle

Materials Characterization Engineer, SPICE Lab (Seattle)

Job  |  Services LLC

SPICE lab (a Seattle-based branch of Amazon’s Lab
126 subsidiary) is a research and development group partnering with Amazon’s most ambitious hardware organizations. SPICE lab Amazon’s growing portfolio of hardware programs includes Kuiper, Prime Air, Mechatronics, Sustainable Packaging, AWS, Lab
126 Devices and others. If you are passionate about building the future and want to take part in developing ideas from concept to production, consider joining the SPICE lab team!

The Materials Characterization and Failure Analysis team leverages science and engineering to improve product reliability and safety, accelerate innovation, and make a direct impact on design through high-quality analysis and expert interpretation of data. This position will support the Global Materials Science organization by investigating structure/process/properties relationships in packaging solutions, optimizing for cost, performance, and sustainability. You will develop and execute world‑class analysis outcomes in the areas of sample preparation and physical/chemical characterization.

A majority of time will be spent in a lab environment, so demonstrated enthusiasm for hands‑on work developing and executing lab procedures is key. You will act as the formal liaison between SPICE lab and the Global Materials Science (GMS) organization, triaging requests of the lab team, designing/executing materials investigations, and providing updates to leadership.

• Data collection and analysis utilizing a variety of characterization methods including optical/electron microscopy, x‑ray imaging, spectroscopy (EDS, FTIR, XRF), thermal‑mechanical (DSC, DMA, TMA, rheometer), and chromatography (IC, GC‑MS).
• Consultation on corrective actions, method development, design/manufacturing best practices and material selection for cross‑functional stakeholders.
• Supporting Sr. Engineering staff to deliver expedient and accurate results for high‑priority and escalated investigations.
• Maintenance of lab tools, and ownership of operations best practices/initiatives to ensure a clean and efficient work environment for the team.

On a typical day in this role you will split time between your desk in our office area and the lab facility down the hallway. You'll have a queue of between 2 and 5 investigations at various stages, tracked using our Issue Management application and provide our internal stakeholders daily updates on progress. Your projects will most often culminate in a materials analysis report document which you'll use to build consensus around actions for the business to take in order to drive new innovations in materials science and engineering.

SPICE lab supports three main roles:
Reliability Testing, Failure Analysis, and Materials Characterization. We frequently work together because conducting thorough root cause analysis is valuable for understanding and remedying any issues uncovered as part of a program’s reliability testing plan. Likewise, the reliability testing team can help to reproduce failure mechanisms, helping to validate the Failure Analysis team’s hypotheses. Finally, many of the same tools are valuable in measuring materials properties or other figures of merit in materials selection exercises.

• 2+ years of hardware design and validation of components, subsystems and systems experience.
• Bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, material science, physics or equivalent.
• Experience with benchmarking technical equipment and metrics.
• Experience with lab safety, security and quality practices.
• Experience using materials and failure analysis techniques. Examples include SEM, computed tomography (CT) X‑ray, cross‑sectioning, and FTIR.

• Master’s degree.
• Experience independently troubleshooting, maintaining, and developing new methods for scientific equipment.
• Demonstrated ability to apply failure analysis methodology to independently develop analysis plans and develop a root‑cause hypothesis with corrective action recommendations.

Amazon…