Sr. Quality Engineer, Solar Manufacturing

About the role

• Sr. Quality Engineer, Solar Manufacturing | Tesla (Manufacturing)
• Location: Brookshire, Texas | Req ID: 275638 | Job Type: Full-time
• What to Expect

Tesla is seeking a Sr. Quality Engineer to support solar cell manufacturing production lines for ingot, wafer, and cell processes. You will help deploy 100GW of solar manufacturing from raw materials on American soil before the end of 2028. You will be responsible for quality of the processes, and final products.

You will partner with design, supply chain, manufacturing, and service teams to develop Tesla's production processes to make high-quality products that meet our internal and external customer expectations.

The Sr. Process Quality Engineer is a professional problem solver who can make good use of quality techniques (Six Sigma, advanced statistics, Advanced Product Quality Planning, data visualization) to solve quality challenges and develop reliable processes that prevent creation of defects, enabling high-quality products that meet the high reliability standards in energy business, contributing to the mission to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy.

Tesla is a demanding and fast-paced environment where you will work with a highly motivated team on extremely challenging projects.

What You'll Do

• During launch of this greenfield facility, develop manufacturing requirements, quality standards, and product quality plans to ensure products meet expectations of our target customers
• Lead development of FMEAs (Design & Process) to identify and address critical risks
• Deploy manufacturing level requirements to subsystems, assemblies, and components to ensure clear focus on design and customer needs
• Support development of manufacturing equipment, controls, and test plans to address risks identified in FMEA
• Design effective experiments through DOE or other methods to support design teams in investigation of various alternatives or in design validation testing for solar cell processes including ingot growth, wafer processing, and cell fabrication Assist development with statistical tolerancing, Monte Carlo analysis, and other methods to investigate the effects of part and process variability on system performance
• Support process capability analyses (Cpk studies) to investigate the ability of suppliers and production processes to meet defined specifications and quality standards
• Develop process control strategies for key variables including resistivity uniformity, wafer thickness, and cell efficiency
• Manage and facilitate the root cause and corrective actions system through tracking and validation of issues, supporting root cause analysis through facilitating brainstorming, use of lean methodologies, hypothesis testing, and design of experiments
• Mentor Senior Quality Engineers and develop team capability through structured knowledge transfer

What You'll Bring

• Bachelor's Degree in Physics, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical, Materials Science Engineering, or equivalent experience
• 8+ years of experience in quality or process engineering in solar, semiconductor, or related manufacturing
• Specific training and demonstrated success in applying design for quality and problem-solving methodologies including FMEA, process capability analysis, hypothesis testing, DOE, SPC, statistical tolerancing
• Strong background and demonstrated success applying statistical methods and quality tools
• Expert knowledge of crystalline silicon solar cell manufacturing including ingot growth (Czochralski), wafer slicing, cell processing
• Hands-on experience with solar cell characterization techniques including I-V measurement, photoluminescence imaging
• Proficiency with Minitab, JMP, or other statistical software and data analysis tools
• Data mining and database experience (e.g., SQL, MES)
• ASQ or Six Sigma certification strongly preferred
• Minitab, JMP or other statistical software capabilities are preferred

Benefits

Along with competitive pay, as a full-time Tesla employee, you are eligible for the following benefits at day 1 of hire:

• Medical plans > plan options with $0 payroll deduction
• Family-building, fertility, adoption and surrogacy benefits
• Dental (including orthodontic coverage) and vision plans, both have options with a $0 paycheck contribution
• Company Paid (Health Savings Accounts) HSA Contribution when enrolled in the High-Deductible medical plan with HSA
• Healthcare and Dependent Care Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA)
• 401(k) with employer match, Employee Stock Purchase Plans, and other financial benefits
• Company paid Basic Life, AD&D
• Short-term and long-term disability insurance (90 day waiting period)
• Employee Assistance Program
• Sick and Vacation time (Flex time for salary positions, Accrued hours for Hourly positions), and Paid Holidays
• Back-up childcare and parenting support resources
• Voluntary benefits to include: critical illness, hospital indemnity, accident insurance, theft & legal services, and pet insurance
• Weight Loss and Tobacco Cessation Programs
• Tesla Babies program
• Commuter benefits
• Employee discounts and perks program
• Earned Wage Access: Real-time pay access paid daily, subject to eligibility and schedule (applicable for below Sr. Managers levels)