Senior Hardware Repair Technician at AeroVironment in San Diego, CA

Job description

Worker Type Regular Job Description Senior Hardware Repair Technician Compensation Grade: TS4 Location: 7480 Mission Valley Rd., Suite 101, San Diego, CA 92108 Work Arrangement: On-site, regular business hours Minimum Experience: 5+ years of related experience Clearance: U.S. Citizenship Required Position Summary AV is seeking a highly skilled and motivated Senior Hardware Repair Technician to join our team in San Diego. The Senior Hardware Repair Technician will serve as a senior technical lead and subject-matter expert for hardware repair, warranty, service, refurbishment, upgrade, and returned-material activities. This position will receive, diagnose, troubleshoot, repair, modify, and test hardware to ensure that units meet quality, performance, reliability, and customer requirements. The position will support engineering, manufacturing, quality, and operations organizations while maintaining throughput throughout the repair pipeline. The Senior Hardware Repair Technician will work closely with mechanical, electrical, systems, manufacturing, quality, and operations teams to resolve complex hardware issues and improve repair processes. This role requires strong hands-on expertise with advanced electronics, RF assemblies, ruggedized computing systems, and system-level debugging. The successful candidate will provide technical guidance, mentoring, and work coordination to repair team members while maintaining a methodical, quality-focused approach. This position does not have formal supervisory or people-management accountability. Key Responsibilities · Serve as the senior technical lead and subject-matter expert for hardware repairs, warranty returns, service activities, upgrades, refurbishment, and defect-management processes. · Receive, log, inspect, triage, and prioritize incoming hardware returns, defective units, and upgrade requests. · Independently complete complex repairs, refurbishment, upgrade, and returned-material assignments. · Coordinate repair priorities and facilitate work activities across hardware repair, engineering, manufacturing, quality, and operations teams. · Provide technical guidance, mentoring, coaching, and knowledge transfer to less-experienced technicians without formal supervisory responsibility. · Perform detailed diagnostics and troubleshooting to isolate mechanical, electrical, firmware, connectivity, RF, and system-level faults. · Repair RF assemblies, including connectors, cables, wire harnesses, sensors, mechanical subassemblies, and related electronic components. · Support firmware updates, calibration, alignment, burn-in, validation testing, and functional testing following repairs. · Collaborate with mechanical, electrical, and systems engineering to obtain schematics, test procedures, engineering change notices, engineering change orders, and applicable tolerances. · Implement approved corrective modifications, retrofits, and engineering changes. · Refurbish, rework, or upgrade units in accordance with specifications, procedures, work instructions, or customer requirements. · Perform and document root-cause and failure analysis and identify recurring failure trends. · Document repair steps, test results, root causes, corrective actions, and lessons learned. · Maintain accurate repair logs, databases, work orders, and related documentation. · Provide input to failure-analysis and continuous-improvement programs. · Track repair pipeline performance, including backlog, turnaround time, quality, first-pass yield, documentation accuracy, and schedule adherence. · Maintain spare-parts, consumables, tooling, and repair-material inventories. · Use Oracle Fusion, as applicable, for inventory, purchasing, materials-management, work-order, and repair-operation activities. · Ensure that repairs comply with quality, safety, regulatory, ESD-control, cleanroom, certification, and internal requirements. · Recommend improvements to repair processes, tooling, work instructions, test fixtures, documentat