Senior HITL Test Engineer
Quality Assurance
San Francisco, CA, USA
USD 150k-215k / year + Equity
Astranis builds advanced satellites for high orbits, expanding humanity’s reach into the solar system. Today, Astranis satellites provide dedicated, secure networks to highly-sophisticated customers across the globe— large enterprises, sovereign governments, and the US military. With five satellites on orbit and many more set to launch soon, the company is servicing a backlog of more than $1 billion of commercial contracts.
Astranis is the preferred satellite communications partner for buyers with stringent requirements for uptime, data security, network visibility, and customization. Astranis has raised over $750 million from some of the world’s best investors, from Andreessen Horowitz to Blackrock and Fidelity, and employs a team of 450 engineers and entrepreneurs. Astranis designs, builds, and operates its satellites out of its 153,000 sq. ft. headquarters in Northern California, USA.
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, EGSE, 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
Base pay is just one component of Astranis’s total rewards package. Your compensation also includes a significant equity package via incentive stock options, high-quality company-subsidized healthcare, disability and life insurance, 401(k) retirement planning, flexible PTO, and free on-site catered meals.