Data Engineer at Elve in Davis, CA

Who is Elve?

Elve, Inc is a deep-tech startup in Davis, CA, specializing in the design and manufacturing of high-efficiency lightweight millimeter-wave and near-THz RF power amplifiers. Our groundbreaking technology enables 100x faster wireless internet access in urban settings and remote locations, revolutionizing the future of wireless connectivity well beyond 5G. We are looking for engineers to join our team and contribute to the advancement of our technology. If you are passionate about RF electronics, precision assembly, manufacturing data and informatics, and working on cutting-edge technology, then we want to hear from you!

Job Description

This role focuses on using data, analytics, and AI to analyze and use that knowledge to improve manufacturing performance, test coverage, and operational decision-making. The Data Engineer will design and deploy data pipelines and databases, statistical analysis tools, and AI-enabled automation of data collection, processing, and interpretation to increase throughput, yield, and reliability across production and test systems.

This is a highly hands-on role. The ideal candidate is comfortable building automation, working directly with manufacturing data, test systems, hardware, production operator teams, and engineers on the manufacturing floor, not operating solely as an analyst or researcher.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and deploy data inputs, structure and implement databases, and apply data processing and analysis to record, post, and interpret manufacturing data from test equipment, IoT devices, and manufacturing systems
• Support root cause analysis and improvement initiatives using data-driven methods
• Partner with manufacturing and test engineers to improve test throughput, data quality, and logging standards, including by developing dashboards and alerts for process health and statistical process control
• Build and deploy automation and agentic AI tools to reduce manual analysis, triage issues, and support decision-making

Requirements

Required Qualifications

• Strong background in data pipeline definitions and streamlining, data analysis, statistics, database design and implementation, API calls, and applied data analysis
• Experience with Python for data processing and automation
• Familiarity with SPC, manufacturing data, or industrial analytics
• Experience integrating data from test systems, sensors, or IoT sources
• Enthusiasm to participate in on-floor troubleshooting and hardware/sensor validation
• Ability to translate ambiguous operational problems into practical technical solutions

Preferred Qualifications

• 3+ years of experience in relevant roles in a commercial setting
• Experience deploying AI or agentic systems in production or operational environments
• Exposure to manufacturing, hardware, or test automation environments
• Experience working in fast-moving venture-backed companies

Benefits

Benefits Include:

• Health benefits (medical, dental, vision)
• Vacation
• A taste of the start-up life
• Exposure to cutting-edge technology in vacuum electronics, materials science, and additive manufacturing

What it’s like to work at Elve

We are an expanding team, on a mission to bring the next generation of high-speed wireless connectivity to a billion people worldwide. That kind of impact is not going to be achieved with incremental improvements- we are gunning for orders of magnitude advances in production capability, cost, size, and power in the mm-wave RF amplifier market. We work really hard, make sure we get good sleep, we handle conflict intentionally, and we expect great things from each other.