SPICE lab (a Seattle-based branch of Amazon’s Lab126 subsidiary) is a research and development group which partners with Amazon’s most ambitious hardware organizations. SPICE lab was founded in 2017 and supports Amazon’s growing portfolio of hardware programs including Kuiper, Prime Air, Robotics, Mechatronics, Lab126 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 Role: The 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. As a Failure Analysis Engineer, you will be responsible for conducting technical lab work which drives prototype failure analysis and materials development investigations. 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 enthusiasm for hands-on work and developing lab procedures is important. You will manage a queue of failure analysis requests supporting Amazon hardware teams with the goal of driving design and manufacturing improvements.


Key job responsibilities
• 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


A day in the life
On a typical day in this role you will split time between your desk in our office area and the 10,000 sq. foot 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 failure analysis report document which you'll use to build consensus around actions for the business to take in order to make reliable products/services which delight customers.

About the team
SPICE lab consists of ~20 engineers supporting two main roles: Reliability Testing, and Materials/Failure Analysis. 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 Failure Analysis team's hypotheses.