HITL Test Engineer

Base Salary $150,000 — $215,000 USD U.S. Citizenship, Lawful Permanent Residency, or Refugee/Asylee Status Required (To comply with U.S. Government space technology export regulations, applicant must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the United States, or other protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3))   Our mission and products are built for everyone, regardless of gender, race, creed, or background. You will collaborate with nearly every engineering team — Flight Software, Guidance Navigation & Control, Avionics, Power, Payload, and Mission Ops — to ensure our testbeds are flight-representative, reliable, and always ready to support testing.

HITL Test Engineer

We are seeking a highly skilled and motivated HITL Test Engineer to join our rapidly-growing team. In this role, you will be responsible for designing, building, and maintaining the  hardware-in-the-loop (HITL) testbeds that serve as the primary proving ground for every satellite we build and fly. You will collaborate with nearly every engineering team — Flight Software, Guidance Navigation & Control, Avionics, Power, Payload, and Mission Ops — to ensure our testbeds are flight-representative, reliable, and always ready to support testing. If it runs on a satellite, it gets proven on HITL first.

Role

• Own the full lifecycle of flatsat and HITL testbed builds, from initial design and BOM development through hardware procurement and software bring-up
• Scope and design harnessing needs, coordinating with manufacturing to produce custom harnesses for flight-like hardware
• Serve on a rotating on-call point of contact for testbed health, triaging anomalies and managing access for other engineers
• Diagnose and resolve hardware and software failures on the testbed, spanning firmware interfaces, flight software, and physical components
• Drive testbed architecture decisions, including hardware allocation tradeoffs and risk mitigation for testbed contention
• Expand simulation capabilities as new satellite blocks come online, integrating motor emulators and deployment simulators
• Develop tooling to improve testbed observability, monitoring, and automated operations
• Assist in recruiting, interviewing, and hiring additional teammates to our rapidly-growing team

Requirements

• Bachelors degree in EE, AE, CS (or equivalent background knowledge)
• 2-5+ years of experience in hardware integration, systems bring-up, or test engineering
• Comfort working across hardware and software, from rack assembly to debugging Python tracebacks
• Experience with embedded systems, proprietary test hardware, or laboratory hardware like logic analyzers and oscilloscopes
• 2+ years of experience with Python (or equivalent high-level scripting language) for test automation
• 1+ years of experience with Linux and shell command line tools
• 1+ years of experience with version control systems (git or equivalent)
• Experience reading schematics and debugging circuits that interface with embedded software
• Strong debugging instincts and a methodical approach to documenting novel failures
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• A passion for building things, including working in a fast-paced environment and hands-on development

Bonus

• Familiarity with flight software architectures, telemetry systems, or simulation frameworks
• Prior experience with networked lab infrastructure, Kubernetes, or Linux system administration
• Please apply even if you do not meet every single criterion listed above