Staff Production Test Engineer
manufacturing › Production Test · P5 — P5 — Expert Professional · Individual contributor
Expert-level individual contributor who designs and optimizes pass/fail test processes for circuit boards, components, and mechanical assemblies across a production line.
Median pay · United States · annual
$142,824 USD
▲ +123.8% vs P1 on this ladder
Typical range ()
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5 of 8
Track
Individual contributor
Family rungs priced
P1 · P2 · P3 · P4 · P5 · P6
—
Coordinates
2 / 4 spaces
pay@2 · 2026-07
What this role is
Expert-level individual contributor who designs and optimizes pass/fail test processes for circuit boards, components, and mechanical assemblies across a production line. At the Expert Professional (P5) level, the role owns multiple systems or a technical domain, establishes the approach, and drives org / multi-team outcomes. Leads cross-team technical initiatives.
What this level does
- Develops and executes comprehensive test strategies across all levels of product assembly — module, server, rack, and cluster — improving the accepted factory test tradition through calculated iteration.
- Applies advanced statistical and analytical methods to identify, quantify, and control test-related risk in complex, high-volume manufacturing environments.
- Leads the integration of customer test requirements, software, and infrastructure into factory systems, acting independently on broad assignments.
- Serves as internal spokesperson for production test in cross-functional design reviews and customer engagements.
- Sponsors automation initiatives that reduce human error and manual intervention on the test floor.
- Knowledge applied
- Applies expert command of end-to-end test architecture across module-to-cluster assembly and advanced statistics to strategic factory test issues; improves the accepted test tradition through calculated iteration.
- Complexity & problem solving
- Works on significant assignments with intangibles, quantifying and controlling systemic test risk with high independence.
- Collaboration & interaction
- Builds influential cross-functional networks and acts as internal spokesperson for test in customer and design engagements.
- Typical experience
- 12+ years of extensive test/manufacturing expertise in high-complexity environments.
Skills at this level
- Test Software Programming
- — Writes and maintains manufacturing test software in C# and C++ to control test stations, sequence measurements, and capture pass/fail data for electronic hardware products.
- NI LabVIEW / TestStand
- — Builds and configures automated production test sequences and instrument control using NI LabVIEW and NI TestStand to execute functional and system-level tests on the manufacturing line.
- Functional Circuit Test (FCT)
- — Designs and operates functional circuit test setups that power up and exercise assembled boards to verify they behave to specification before downstream assembly.
- Burn-in and System-Level Test (SLT)
- — Configures and runs burn-in and system-level test regimes that stress finished modules, servers, and racks under load to screen out early-life failures.
- Test Fixture Development
- — Designs, builds, and debugs mechanical and electrical test fixtures that interface production units to test equipment repeatably across high volume.
- PFMEA
- — Conducts Process Failure Mode and Effects Analysis on new-product test processes to anticipate failure modes and prioritize controls before production ramp.
- Statistical Process Control (SPC)
- — Applies SPC methods to monitor test parameters and yield trends on the production line, detecting drift and triggering corrective action before escapes occur.
- MES Integration
- — Integrates test stations with Manufacturing Execution Systems to route units, enforce test flow, and capture per-unit test results for traceability and analysis.
- Test Coverage Analysis
- — Quantifies and improves the fraction of a product's functions and faults exercised by the test suite, closing gaps that let defects escape to the field.
- Root Cause Analysis of Test Anomalies
- — Investigates test escapes and unexplained failures across programs to isolate the true cause and drive systemic corrective actions on the factory floor.
- Design for Test (DFT)
- — Influences product design teams to build in testability features early in the development lifecycle, reducing downstream test complexity, fixture cost, and cycle time.
- Advanced Statistical Risk Analysis
- — Uses advanced statistical and analytical methods to identify, quantify, and control test-related risk in complex, high-volume manufacturing environments.
- Lean / Continuous Improvement
- — Leads lean manufacturing and continuous-improvement initiatives targeting test cycle time, first-pass yield, and reduction of manual intervention on the test floor.
- Test Strategy Architecture
- — Defines end-to-end test strategies spanning module, server, rack, and cluster assembly levels and sets the roadmap and readiness frameworks the organization executes against.
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As of · 2026-07-30
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