Principal Engineer – Connector Reliability

POSITION SUMMARY

Principal Engineer – Connector Reliability is the senior technical authority for connector reliability within Amphenol Power BU. This is a high-impact individual contributor role — not a product development position — that provides independent, expert-level reliability support to design, quality, and application engineering teams across the full product development lifecycle.

This role translates high-risk failure modes identified through DFMEA and risk evaluation into rigorous, targeted reliability test programs. By combining reliability engineering discipline with compliance support, this role ensures that Amphenol Power connector products are both safe and durable before they reach market.

• Risk-Based Reliability Test Definition & Planning
• Consume DFMEA outputs and risk evaluation results to identify the highest-priority failure modes requiring reliability test coverage.
• Define targeted test plans specifying methods, stress levels, sample sizes, acceptance criteria, and pass/fail thresholds — grounded in physics-of-failure principles.
• Map identified failure modes (contact wear, corrosion, thermal cycling, mechanical fatigue, environmental degradation) to appropriate methods drawn from IEC 60512, USCAR-2, AEC-Q200, MIL-STD, and Amphenol internal standards.
• Develop and maintain standardized reliability test frameworks, sequence-of-test matrices, and test plan templates across Power BU programs and global sites.
• Review test results against acceptance criteria; interpret failures in the context of the original risk profile and advise on required design or process responses.
• Align reliability testing, qualification testing, and certification testing to minimize duplication, reduce cost, and accelerate time to approval.

• Develop MTBF predictions using MIL-HDBK-217F, Telcordia SR-332, IEC TR 62380, and FIDES methodologies.
• Build physics-of-failure models to evaluate long-term connector reliability under thermal, mechanical, and electrical stress conditions.
• Develop mating cycle life models relating contact geometry, plating system, normal force, and mechanics to degradation of contact resistance and electrical performance over time.
• Define and validate accelerated life testing (ALT) and HALT plans; develop reliability growth models and reliability demonstration test (RDT) matrices for new programs.
• Analyze field return data to validate predicted failure models and continuously improve prediction accuracy; provide reliability data for customer proposals and qualification packages.

• Review and provide expert commentary on product designs, drawings, specifications, and test protocols from a reliability and risk perspective.
• Advise on connector contact system design choices (material, plating, geometry) as they relate to wear life, contact reliability, and mating cycle durability.
• Support selection of test methods and qualification criteria aligned to IEC, UL, USCAR, AEC-Q200, and customer-specific reliability requirements.
• Provide guidance on reliability-impacting manufacturing processes — plating thickness, assembly torque, housing material selection — and collaborate with quality and manufacturing teams to ensure process controls support reliability targets.
• Integrate compliance requirements directly into DFMEA reviews, risk assessments, and reliability test planning — ensuring safety-critical and regulatory-driven failure modes receive appropriate validation coverage.
• Assess compliance and certification impact of design changes, material substitutions, supplier changes, and manufacturing transfers; manage ongoing certification maintenance requirements.
• Act as the customer-facing SME representing site engineering on product safety, certification, and regulatory compliance — supporting RFQs, audits, and technical reviews with authoritative, clear responses on certification paths, timelines, and limitations.

• Lead and support failure analysis investigations (8D, fishbone, fault tree, FTA, SEM/cross-section) for in-process, field, and customer-returned connector products.
• Identify systemic…