Electronics Engineer (Components and Obsolescence)

An established New Zealand electronics company with its own in-house engineering team is now hiring an Electronics Engineer to keep a mature product range reliable, buildable, and compliant over the long term. Rather than designing new products from scratch, you will look after what happens once a product is in the market: replacing parts as they disappear, making careful improvements, and proving that every change still does what it should.

In this role you will make sure a proven product can still be built as the market around it keeps changing. When a part is heading toward end of life, or a supplier changes something about it, you will weigh up the risk, find a suitable replacement, and work out what the swap means for the product before anything is released. Much of the work happens at the bench, where you will analyse circuits, investigate faults, run tests, and write up clear evidence behind every recommendation. Alongside the component work you will design and validate smaller hardware improvements, keep schematics, PCB documentation, and parts lists accurate as you go, and move each change through a controlled review and release process. When an electronics issue shows up on the production line or with a customer, production, quality, purchasing, and support will come to you first, and you will lead the investigation through to a proper fix. This role suits an engineer with a few solid years of experience who enjoys detailed, methodical work and gets real satisfaction from making a good product better. The team is close knit and long serving, and the work relies on day-to-day contact with colleagues.

This is a full time, onsite role based in Wellington, with some flexibility on start and finish times. Relocation support is available to candidates moving from elsewhere. Candidates based in Australia are welcome to apply, but full working rights in New Zealand are required. Benefits include fully paid comprehensive medical insurance, a subsidised social club, and a discretionary annual bonus.

Key Responsibilities:

• Monitor the availability of components used across the product range and raise obsolescence risks before they become shortages.
• Review supplier notices about part changes and decide what action each one calls for.
• Find and assess alternative parts, then qualify replacements through analysis and testing before they reach production.
• Determine how each substitution affects the product's performance, long term reliability, ease of manufacture, and certification.
• Design and validate smaller hardware improvements to products already in the market.
• Plan and run verification testing for each change, interpret the results, and write clear reports with recommendations.
• Keep schematics, PCB documentation, parts lists, specifications, and test records accurate and under proper version control.
• Take engineering changes through formal review and release and help keep released product configurations under control.
• Help production, quality, purchasing, and support teams get to the bottom of hardware issues from the line or the field, and see corrective actions through.
• Work with distributors and contract manufacturers on availability and technical detail, and favour part choices that reduce supply risk, improve reliability, or lower cost.

Requirements:

• Degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering or an equivalent qualification.
• At least 3 years working hands-on with electronic hardware, whether in product development, sustaining engineering, or a similar role.
• Solid grounding in analogue and digital electronics, with confidence reading, analysing, and modifying existing circuit designs.
• Direct experience handling component obsolescence and qualifying replacement parts.
• The ability to take a hardware change from assessment and design through testing, documentation, and release.
• Experience producing and maintaining engineering documentation within a controlled change process.
• Comfort at the bench with a scope, logic analyser, multimeter, and bench supply.
• A careful, methodical approach to problem solving, good communication skills, and the ability to juggle several priorities while working closely with a team.

Desirable but not essential:

• Experience working in or alongside an electronics manufacturing environment.
• A background in industrial, embedded, or other long lived electronic products.
• Experience with Altium Designer or a similar PCB design tool.
• Knowledge of EMC, product compliance, and certification requirements.
• Experience with PLM, ERP, or document management systems, and professional engineering registration or eligibility for it.

Please reach out to [email protected] for more info