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 supports a growing portfolio of hardware programs including 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 role will support the Global Materials Science organization by investigating structure/process/properties relationships in packaging solutions, optimizing for cost, performance, and sustainability. 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.

As the formal liaison between SPICE lab and the Global Materials Science (GMS) organization, you will triage lab requests, design and execute materials investigations, and provide updates to leadership.

• Data collection and analysis utilizing 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 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 you will provide internal stakeholders with daily progress updates. Your projects will most often culminate in a materials analysis report document used 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 to conduct thorough root-cause analysis, which is valuable for understanding and remedying issues uncovered as part of a program’s reliability testing plan. The reliability testing team can help reproduce failure mechanisms to validate Failure Analysis team hypotheses. Many of the same tools are valuable in measuring materials properties and 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 root-cause hypotheses with corrective action recommendations.

Amazon is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of protected veteran status, disability, or other legally protected status.

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