--- title: 'Hardware Test Engineer at Specter' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/hardware-test-engineer-specter-san-francisco-0tgzpmm9kqx3' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-09-07' --- # Hardware Test Engineer at Specter - **Company:** Specter - **Location:** San Francisco, CA - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** onsite - **Posted:** 2026-08-05 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-07 - **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/specter/dab4adfc-971b-4f8e-b0c8-f36ed9df75f9 ## Job description Your job is to build the machine that hunts down our hardware's weaknesses and gets that data in front of the people who can fix them. You're the hands-on end of it: test plans, fixtures, automation—and when the machine catches something, you chase it to root cause. ## ABOUT SPECTER Specter’s mission is to help customers automate the physical world. Today, we build video sensors with state-of-the-art AI agents that answer any question, anywhere in their environments. Our systems can automatically detect and reason about any physical activity captured on camera, from security incidents (e.g. perimeter intrusion, theft, LPR), to safety monitoring (e.g. PPE detection, injured people), to operational efficiency (e.g. material tracking, congestion monitoring). We offer both long range wireless (1km range) and wired sensor variants to suit any deployment. ## THE ROLE Given a product and its requirements, you build the test plan, build the fixture, run the campaign, and script it so the next run is faster. When a unit fails—on the bench, in a chamber, or in the field—you own it across mechanical, electrical, and firmware boundaries until it's understood and fixed. Concretely, here are some of the things you'll work on in the first few months: - Plan and run campaigns — Turn product requirements into concrete test plans, then execute: set up fixtures, run chambers, stress hardware to its limits, collect the data, write the report. - Automate — Script thermal, shock, and vibration campaigns in Python against instruments and fixtures so every run is reproducible. - Root cause analysis — Chase failures to ground: tear down failed units, isolate the cause across hardware, firmware, and mechanical, and verify the fix. What you find inside reshapes the tests. - Accelerated life testing — Run ALT and HALT to compress years of field wear into weeks, find the design margins, and feed end-of-life data back to the design team. - Support EVT / DVT / PVT builds — Validation bring-up during NPI, plus reliability and abuse testing—thermal cycling, vibration, ingress, drops and mishandling, long-duration burn-in. This is an early-stage team—your fingerprints will be on every fixture, script, and test report we have. ## SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE - 2+ years of hardware validation or test — Reliability, qualification, or systems test for embedded hardware products. - Bench skills — Fluent with oscilloscopes, multimeters, logic analyzers, and power analyzers for bring-up and debug; thermal chambers and shakers are familiar territory too. - Fixture hands — You've built or modified test fixtures and harnesses to get a unit connected, stressed, and measured. - Reliability and stress testing — You've run mechanical, thermal, environmental, and abuse tests and can interpret what the results mean for the design. - Structured root cause — You debug methodically across hardware, firmware, and system boundaries—teardowns included—and you don't declare victory on a hunch. - Python and Linux — You drive instruments, sequence test runs, and make campaigns reproducible end to end—from a shell. Our products and rigs all run Linux; SSH and logs are home turf. - Data rigor — You treat test data statistically: distributions, margins, trends across campaigns. - Cross-functional by default — You work daily with EE, firmware, mechanical, and manufacturing without needing a process to make it happen. ## BONUS SKILLS - Production test systems — End-of-line stations, pogo-pin fixtures, or test that runs at production rate. - EMC exposure — Pre-compliance testing or supporting formal certification. - Manufacturing test — Production-line test experience or the validation-to-manufacturing handoff. ## About Specter ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Specter builds and deploys long-range wireless sensing networks with AI-powered real-time alerts and semantic search, creating the perception layer for the physical world. - **Entity Type**: Private (funding stage not publicly disclosed) - **Headquarters**: Not publicly available (likely US based on website language and job postings) - **Founded**: Not publicly available - **Founders**: Not publicly available ## Core Business - Primary industries: Physical security, critical infrastructure monitoring, industrial IoT, real-time situational awareness - Target customers: Enterprise and government – including energy companies, data centers, construction firms, ports, stadiums, industrial facilities, and campuses - Mission statement: "Creating a Software Defined Physical World" – providing instant awareness through real-time alerts, semantic search, and a map-based view of every event ## Products & Services - **Specter Platform**: A SaaS-based physical intelligence platform that ingests data from long-range wireless sensors (video, thermal, acoustic) and applies general AI (natural language alerts) to detect events such as unauthorized access, safety hazards, equipment anomalies, fires, spills, and perimeter breaches. Features include semantic search, live and historical event detection, and complete situational awareness dashboards. - **Long-Range Wireless Sensing Network**: Proprietary hardware and software for rugged, wide-area coverage without trenching – deployed across refineries, deserts, offshore platforms, construction sites, and other harsh environments. ## Market Standing - **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed - **Key Metric**: Annual revenue not publicly available; company is actively hiring (Software Engineer – Systems listing) and has a live product across multiple industry verticals. - **Notable Investors/Partners**: Not publicly available - **Growth Signals**: Recent website updates as of June 2026; expanding to new use cases (energy, data centers, construction, ports, stadiums); job openings indicate scaling engineering team. ## Competitive Advantages - **Long-range wireless sensing** that eliminates blind spots without trenching or on-site personnel – a differentiator for remote and harsh environments. - **General AI with natural language alerts** – users set and query alerts in plain English, lowering the barrier for security and operations teams. - **Multimodal sensing** (video, thermal, acoustic) combined with real-time analytics for high-fidelity event detection (e.g., PPE compliance, spills, equipment theft, person-down incidents). - Focus on **critical infrastructure** where downtime or security gaps carry high stakes, creating deep vertical-specific moats. ## Strategic Focus - Expanding horizontal deployment across energy, data centers, construction, logistics, and campus security. - Deepening AI capabilities through real-time semantic search and event detection to replace traditional CCTV monitoring. - Building a “software-defined physical world” that unifies disparate sensors into a single intelligent layer. ## Why Work Here - Opportunity to work on cutting-edge AI + IoT systems that monitor real-world infrastructure at scale. - Engineering culture likely emphasizes distributed systems, computer vision, edge computing, and high-reliability software (based on job description for Software Engineer – Systems). - Fast-paced startup environment with a clear product-market fit across multiple verticals. - Remote/hybrid policy not explicitly stated; job posting does not specify location, but likely offers flexibility. ## Sources 1. [specter.co](https://specter.co/) 2. [specter.co/product](https://specter.co/product) 3. [specter.co/industries](https://specter.co/industries) 4. [specter.co/features](https://specter.co/features) 5. [jobs.ashbyhq.com - Software Engineer – Systems](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/specter/fe26a690-7934-46f4-bce2-8d8c5495a0dc) ## Other roles at Specter - [Wireless Software Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/wireless-software-engineer-specter-san-francisco-zvjchm89fzv0) — San Francisco, CA - [Software Engineer - Applied AI](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-applied-ai-specter-san-francisco-p7er9310dx06) — San Francisco, CA - [Senior Antenna Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-antenna-engineer-specter-san-francisco-xea2760wvrkw) — San Francisco, CA - [Software Engineer — Fleet](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-fleet-specter-san-francisco-5tm2vh5drfnf) — San Francisco, CA - [Platform Site Reliability Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/platform-site-reliability-engineer-specter-san-francisco-c9mhsvjd32qq) — San Francisco, CA - [Recruiting Coordinator](https://feeny.ai/job/recruiting-coordinator-specter-san-francisco-y4c4fq3ctm2y) — San Francisco, CA - [Founding Deployment Strategist](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-deployment-strategist-specter-san-francisco-81ba238x3y8m) — San Francisco, CA - [Senior Accounting Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-accounting-manager-specter-san-francisco-c560c7hymx09) — San Francisco, CA - [Hardware Test Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/hardware-test-lead-specter-san-francisco-m6ynp7p1kq82) — San Francisco, CA - [Founding Recruiter](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-recruiter-specter-san-francisco-rx0h3svbzxxs) — San Francisco, CA