Manager – Field Quality

About Base

Base is America’s next-generation power company. We’re rebuilding the foundation of modern civilization–electricity–by deploying a vast network of distributed batteries that is transforming today’s fragile, centralized grid into a resilient and abundant system. We are engineers, operators, and creatives solving some of the most complex, interdisciplinary challenges of our time.

About the Role

Base is hiring a Senior Manager of Field Quality to own what happens after hardware ships. Reliability testing tells us what we think will break. The field tells us what actually breaks, usually in a way the test protocol didn't anticipate. You'll lead the team that sees it early, sorts out what matters, and gets it fixed in design and in our supply base. You'll build this function as the fleet scales.

What You'll Do

• Own fleet return rate. Set targets, report the real numbers, and own it when a failure mode starts trending.

• Hire and grow field quality, failure analysis, and test engineers and technicians. Set the technical bar.

• Drive root cause to closure: field signal, RMA triage, teardown, failure recreation, corrective action, and verification in the fleet. Personally lead the investigations that matter.

• Make the field calls: swap, pull, stop ship, firmware mitigation, or retrofit campaign.

• Turn field failures into design changes with evidence, and hold each change through implementation.

• Own the data: dashboards, failure taxonomy, and Paretos that are only worth something if the failure coding is honest.

• Close the loop on supplier performance with supplier industrialization through 8D/CAPA and scorecards.

• Own the failure analysis lab and the methods to recreate failures and confirm fixes.

• Manage cost of poor quality. Warranty spend, truck rolls, and scrap are engineering metrics.

What You'll Bring

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Materials, Physics, or a related field.

• 7+ years in field quality, reliability, failure analysis, or hardware design engineering, including 3+ years leading engineers.

• You've owned a deployed fleet at scale, caught a failure mode in the data, and driven it to closure.

• Strong fundamentals in electronics, battery, thermal, or electromechanical systems. You can hold your own in a teardown and argue failure physics.

• Triage instinct and sound judgment on high-stakes field calls where acting and waiting both cost real money.

• Comfort with Grafana, SQL/BigQuery, and Python.

• You can brief an exec on fleet risk in five minutes and debug a PCBA with an engineer for five hours.

Preferred Skills

• Battery energy storage, inverters, or other grid-connected power hardware.

• Scaling a field quality function alongside a fast-growing fleet.

• Safety-critical hardware, UL/NFPA compliance, or field safety escalations.

• Hands-on failure analysis: cross-sectioning, X-ray, thermal imaging, and materials characterization.

• Driving supplier corrective actions and holding suppliers to schedule.

About the Team

Our hardware reliability and test team breaks Base products before our members can. We run mechanical, electrical, environmental, and abuse testing from component to full system, track how the fleet holds up in the field, root-cause the failures that matter, and feed fixes straight back to design. Homeowners across the country rely on Base for whole-home backup and lower electricity bills. Our network of home batteries also helps keep the grid stable as demand climbs from AI, electrification, and extreme weather. We build in-house and expand at a speed and cost incumbents can't match, and this team makes that possible.

Please note: Base is a startup, which means priorities shift and evolve quickly. Your role may expand or change based on the needs of the business at any given time, so the responsibilities listed may not be exhaustive.

Our Values

• First Principles Thinking: Question assumptions. Principles > rules.

• Operate at Base Pace: Focus on what matters, act quickly, and learn by doing.

• Give & Get Feedback: Be direct, be humble, and maintain a growth mindset.

• Everyone’s an Owner: Follow through on commitments and own results.

• Strong Opinions, Loosely Held: Drive clarity and make calls with imperfect information.

• Committed to the Mission: Rebuilding the grid is a big challenge. We work hard because we care deeply about the impact we’re creating. We work in-person. It’s not a 9-to-5. We are all-in.

• Fun & Optimism Coexist with Grit: Collaboration and celebration coincide with the intensity of building real things.

Do the best work of your life at Base.