# Reliability Engineer at Cowboy Space

- Company: Cowboy Space
- What the company does: Backed by a16z, Index and NEA.
- Company website: https://www.cowboyspace.com/
- Type: Startups
- Level: Mid level
- Location: Kent, Washington
- Work setup: On-site
- Pay: $140K to $185K base salary per year (USD)
- Posted: 2026-09-14
- Apply by: 2026-10-29
- Apply: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/cowboyspace/aeba8bef-c701-476c-a8ed-6b662f4c2701
- Page: https://www.1752.vc/careers/jobs/cowboy-space-reliability-engineer/

## About the role

You are our first Reliability Engineer, so you are not inheriting a process: you are deciding what it is. There is a well-worn reliability playbook in this industry, developed at large primes on programs with hundreds of engineers, and most of it will make us slower without making the rocket better. Your job is to figure out which parts earn their keep here, implement those, and leave the rest on the shelf.

## What they're looking for

- 5-8 years in reliability, mission assurance, or systems engineering with real reliability ownership, on hardware where failure had consequences
- Command of the core methods: FMECA, fault tree analysis, common-cause analysis, allocation, Weibull and life-data analysis
- The judgment to right-size. You have seen reliability process applied where it did not belong, and you have opinions about the alternative
- Physics-of-failure instinct: you want to know why the part broke, not just how often parts like it break
- Hands-on test experience. You have stood next to hardware, watched it misbehave, and worked the anomaly to root cause
- Python sufficient to run Monte Carlos, fit life data, and build tools your teammates use without your help

Tags: Launch & Propulsion Engineering