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Vehicle Competence Engineer

Trillium Professional is now seeking a Vehicle Competence Engineer in Santa Clara, CA!

Pay rate is $60 - $65/hour. Must be flexible to cover one weekend day: Tue – Sat or Sun-Thurs and be flexible to work PM/night shift (1:00PM – 9:00AM) if needed.

The purpose of this position is to strengthen the Vehicle Competence team’s electrical troubleshooting capability. The engineer will serve as a first responder for electrical, wiring, communication, and hardware issues identified on prototype and development vehicles.

The role is responsible for reproducing issues, performing structured electrical diagnosis, identifying the affected circuit or component, and providing clear technical findings to the responsible engineering or prototype build team. Permanent repairs, harness reworks, and hardware modifications will generally be completed by the appropriate build, workshop, or component-owning team.
 
Responsibilities
-Triage electrical and hardware issues on prototype and pre-production vehicles.
-Diagnose faults involving wiring harnesses, connectors, terminals, grounds, fuses, relays, ECUs, sensors, and data-logging equipment.
-Troubleshoot open circuits, short circuits, voltage drops, intermittent connections, power-supply issues, grounding faults, and abnormal current consumption.
-Read and interpret wiring diagrams, electrical schematics, connector views, pin assignments, and vehicle network topologies.
-Perform electrical measurements using multimeters, oscilloscopes, current clamps, breakout boxes, and other diagnostic equipment.
-Inspect harness routing, connector engagement, terminal condition, shielding, grounding, and prototype installation quality.
-Correlate electrical measurements with ECU fault codes, vehicle communication traces, software logs, and reported vehicle behavior.
-Distinguish between electrical, hardware, communication, configuration, calibration, and software-related failure modes.
-Diagnose vehicle communication issues involving CAN, LIN, -FlexRay, Automotive Ethernet, and related gateways.
-Perform limited vehicle disassembly and reassembly to access electrical components and prototype installations.
-Document reproduction steps, measurements, photographs, traces, affected components, and suspected root cause.
-Escalate confirmed issues to the responsible engineering, prototype build, workshop, supplier, or component-owning team for repair or rework.
-Support repair verification and confirm that the reported issue has been resolved.
-Identify recurring electrical issues and recommend improvements to prototype build quality, installation practices, and diagnostic procedures.
-Develop troubleshooting guides, inspection checklists, and known-issue documentation for the Vehicle Integration team.
-Support vehicle commissioning, ECU replacement, flashing, configuration, and hardware installation activities as required.

Apply now!
 
Required Qualifications
-Must have German OEM experience 
-Focus on electrical engineering background and triage experience
-Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Electronics Engineering, Automotive Engineering, Mechatronics, or a related field. 
-Minimum of three years of experience in automotive electrical systems, vehicle integration, prototype development, or vehicle diagnostics.
-Hands-on experience diagnosing low-voltage automotive electrical and electronic systems.
-Ability to read wiring diagrams, schematics, connector drawings, and pinout documentation.
-Experience using multimeters, oscilloscopes, and automotive diagnostic equipment.
-Experience diagnosing wiring harnesses, connectors, grounds, power distribution, sensors, and ECUs.
-Understanding of CAN and Automotive Ethernet; experience with LIN or FlexRay is beneficial.
-Experience with tools such as Vector CANoe, CANalyzer, CANape, or comparable diagnostic platforms.
 
Preferred Qualifications:
-Prototype or pre-production vehicle experience.
-ADAS or automated-driving vehicle integration experience.
-Experience with radar, LiDAR, camera, ultrasonic, GNSS, and related sensor hardware.
-Familiarity with 12 V and 48 V vehicle electrical architectures.
-Experience diagnosing battery drain, ECU sleep/wake behavior, shielding, signal integrity, and communication faults.
-Familiarity with harness construction, terminal systems, crimping principles, and connector repair practices.
-Experience with Python or shell scripting for diagnostic automation.
-Familiarity with structured root-cause analysis and issue-tracking tools.

Trillium Technical has been recruiting and placing Engineering professionals for over 30 years. From Fortune 100 companies to small businesses, our philosophy remains the same: to achieve excellence by providing quality employees with an uncompromising level of service. We believe in honesty, integrity, and a simple philosophy of providing value to our customers and our employees. We strive to be unsurpassed in the recruitment and placement of Engineering professionals. Trillium is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

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Trillium offers a comprehensive benefit package that includes the ability to participate in health insurance and retirement plans, paid holidays, state required leave, and other leave, if applicable. Trillium’s offerings are dependent on the state in which the assignment is located, length of time worked, and may change depending on assignment. Benefit packages for direct hire placements vary based on the client company.

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