Senior Integrated Systems Engineer (Payload SW), STAR (System Test Automation and Regression)

Amazon Leo is Amazon"s low Earth orbit satellite network. Our mission is to deliver fast, reliable internet connectivity to customers beyond the reach of existing networks. From individual households to schools, hospitals, businesses, and government agencies, Amazon Leo will serve people and organizations operating in locations without reliable connectivity.

Behind every satellite in our constellation is a payload - the communication system that makes connectivity possible. Before a single satellite reaches orbit, its payload software must be validated through automated nightly regression testing that catches defects early and accelerates release cadence.

We are hiring a Senior Integrated Systems Engineer to lead the requirements strategy, operational excellence, and continuous improvement of nightly regression test runs for payload software. You will drive alignment across payload software teams, test automation engineers, and operations to define what we test, set the bar for operational reliability, and architect the processes that transform nightly regression from a reporting mechanism into a production-gating quality system.

This role requires deep system-level understanding of how payload software works - signal routing, beam management, protocol handling, fault recovery - and the ability to translate that understanding into test strategy that scales with constellation growth.

You will not write test automation code full-time. You will define the test strategy, own operational outcomes, drive systemic improvements, mentor engineers, and make the architectural decisions about what we test and how we measure readiness.

What Makes This Role Different

You own the question: "Is our payload software ready?" You define what "tested" means, you set the bar for nightly run reliability, and you drive the systemic improvements that make regression results trustworthy enough to gate production decisions. You operate at the intersection of payload domain expertise, test strategy, and operational excellence-and your technical judgment directly influences satellite launch readiness.

Export Control Requirement: Due to applicable export control laws and regulations, candidates must be a U.S. citizen or national, U.S. permanent resident (i.e., current Green Card holder), or lawfully admitted into the U.S. as a refugee or granted asylum.

Key job responsibilities

• Develop deep expertise in payload software architecture-signal processing chains, protocol stacks, resource management, and fault handling-to define comprehensive test strategies and prioritize coverage investments.
• Lead requirements gathering across payload software engineers, systems engineers, and RF engineers, ensuring test coverage evolves ahead of the payload software roadmap.
• Own operational excellence of nightly regression runs: define SLAs for run reliability, establish escalation paths, and drive systemic improvements that eliminate recurring failure modes.
• Lead technical roadmap definition efforts for test coverage expansion and operational improvements-decide what to build, what to defer, and what to retire.
• Define and own metrics for nightly run effectiveness-pass rates, flakiness, coverage gaps, cycle time, defect escape rate-and drive accountability across contributing teams.
• Identify systemic patterns in nightly run failures and drive architectural changes (not just fixes) that prevent entire classes of issues from recurring.
• Collaborate with internal and external customers to define and implement system architectures for integrated test venues.
• Design complex test sequences that coordinate and synchronize equipment and services across multiple layers to verify function and performance of satellite hardware and software.
• Architect test plans, coverage models, and traceability frameworks that scale as payload software complexity grows.
• Influence payload software design for testability-participate in architecture reviews and advocate for interfaces, hooks, and observability that enable effective automated testing.
• Mentor engineers on the team in systems thinking, requirements definition, and operational rigor.
• Lead design reviews and cross-team technical discussions to align test strategy with program milestones.
• Drive process improvements across test environment configuration, data management, results reporting, and stakeholder communication.

A day in the life

You start by reviewing the weekly nightly run trends. Reliability has plateaued at 97%-the remaining 3% failures are distributed across three root causes. You draft a proposal to address the largest contributor: test environment state leakage between runs. Your proposed architectural change (isolated environment provisioning per run) will require investment from the infrastructure team, so you prepare a data-backed case showing the cost of the current failure mode in engineering hours and delayed defect detection. At 10 AM, you lead a quarterly test strategy review with payload software leadership-you present coverage gaps mapped against the upcoming feature roadmap and recommend reallocating automation sprint capacity toward beam management testing, where defect escape rate is highest. After lunch, you mentor a junior systems engineer on how to decompose a complex protocol state machine into testable scenarios. Before end of day, you review a proposal from the automation team for a new test framework component-you approve the design but push back on the interface contract, which does not account for a payload software architecture change planned for Q4.

About the team

The STAR (System Test Automation and Regression) team for payload test automation builds the regression-testing backbone for payload software. We own the frameworks, pipelines, and infrastructure that validate every payload software release before it reaches a satellite. We operate at the boundary between software engineering and satellite systems-our engineers understand both domains and bridge them through automation.