Field Reliability Engineer

About Tutor We believe robots should be the next chapter in making physical labor safer and more affordable. But, nearly nine out of ten American factories and warehouses don’t have a single robot. Tutor Intelligence is changing that. We build robots that go straight into real factories and warehouses, to do real work, with real impact. Our robot Cassie does back-breaking work, moving boxes, pallets, and bulk goods for family-owned manufacturers to some of the largest brands in the world. Our robot Sonny does handwork, using two arms to achieve human-like dexterity in picking and packing. Every robot learns on the job, and each one we deploy makes the next one more capable, more affordable, and faster to put to work. Founded at MIT and headquartered in Watertown, MA, we do it all in-house: the robotics hardware, the machine learning, and the field deployment and service. We’re a team of researchers, engineers, technicians, operators, and sellers who love building things and solving hard problems. Our mission is grand: robots everywhere, for the common good, raising the standard of living across North America, and then the world. Why Tutor? Whether you’re designing robots, closing deals, running deployments, or creating the processes that help us scale, your work doesn’t sit on a shelf. It shows up on real production floors, making physical work safer and more affordable. Our team of 160+ is driven by curiosity and a genuine love of building. Everyone here takes real ownership, learns fast, and holds a high bar while having each other’s backs. If you love hard problems and creating things that didn’t exist before, you’ll fit right in. The Role Tutor Intelligence is hiring a Field Reliability Engineer to lead the investigation and resolution of the most difficult technical problems across the robot fleet. The role is based in Watertown, MA, with travel to customer sites 50 to 75% of the time, and reports to the Head of Robot Operations and Reliability. Tutor robots run production in warehouses and factories across North America, and the fleet is growing quickly. As it grows, some failures become harder to pin down: intermittent faults, problems that show up only at one site, or issues that appear only after weeks of operation. The Field Reliability Engineer takes ownership of these cases from the first report through to a verified fix. The work involves reviewing logs, telemetry and parts history, getting a multimeter or an oscilloscope on the robot to test a theory, running the root cause analysis, and putting together an action plan with the engineering owner of the affected hardware to diagnose and resolve the customer's issue. The Field Reliability Engineer proposes the fix and settles it with the engineering owner, sets root-cause priority among open escalations, and follows each fix through Engineering and Manufacturing so it is applied to robots in the field and built into robots not yet shipped, and sits in the design review for every fix they drove. Results are checked against fleet data, and a failure mode is closed only when the repeat failures stop. The role also leads the first installation of each new robot model, design or application, runs major upgrade campaigns, and takes major customer escalations on a shared national rotation. Each job ends with a written procedure and a regional technician trained to do the work. The right person for this is sharp, a very good communicator, and comfortable across electronics, firmware and software, with mechanical a plus: a jack of all trades who can work a problem from the wiring to the logs. This could be a strong first engineering role for someone with the aptitude and some hands-on experience, or the next step for an experienced field engineer. Either way, strong candidates are curious about why failures happen, rely on data to make decisions, and are comfortable owning a problem until the work is done.

Where this goes

• Into engineering. Our robots are designed by Members of Technical Staff, and Field Reliability Engineers work with them every day on the failures they own. People who show they can find the cause and land the fix are the people we want designing the next robot.
• Into leading field reliability. As the fleet grows, so does the network of regional technicians and the number of hard cases. The people who built the procedures and trained the technicians are the ones who lead that.

Requirements

• 1 to 7 years of experience in field engineering, controls, automation, test or hardware engineering, or senior field service on robotic or industrial automation systems.
• Demonstrated record of resolving complex failures, with clear documentation of the root cause, the fix and the measured result.
• Structured troubleshooting across electrical, mechanical, networking and software systems.
• Ability to read schematics, wiring diagrams and mechanical drawings.
• Working knowledge of Linux, the command line and system logs.
• Experience using scripting or AI tools to analyze data, run checks and prepare reports.
• Experience leading root-cause investigations with engineering teams and driving corrective actions to completion.
• Experience training technicians and writing clear procedures.
• Strong written and verbal communication with technicians, engineers, customers and leadership.
• Comfortable working in warehouse and manufacturing environments.
• Ability to travel 50 to 75% of the time, sometimes on short notice.

Nice to haves

• Degree in mechanical, electrical, mechatronics or a related engineering field.
• Experience with robot arms, vision systems, lidar or mobile robots.
• Experience with failure analysis or reliability methods such as FMEA, Weibull analysis or teardown analysis.
• Experience commissioning or installing new automated systems.
• Background in fulfillment, logistics, manufacturing or food and beverage operations.

Benefits

• Fully employer-covered health insurance, so you’re protected without the premium.
• A managed 401(k) to help you plan for the future.
• Generous time off: unlimited PTO and all federal holidays off for full-time salaried employees, and 16+ days of accrued paid time off plus 1.5x pay on federal holidays for hourly employees.
• Regular in-office meals and team social events throughout the year.

Compensation The base salary range for this role is $90,000 to $150,000, depending on experience. As Tutor grows, so will our benefits. We’re continuing to invest in ways to support our team at work and beyond.