3 days ago
San Diego, CA, USASenior
Base Salary
$140k - $185k/yr
Responsibilities
- Own system testing for embedded Linux and RTOS avionics targets, including functional, timing, regression, and flight-safety validation.
- Plan and execute feature, bring-up, exploratory, protocol-regression, acceptance, and release-signoff testing.
- Build and maintain HIL/SIL automation for drivers, middleware, sensors, buses, serial, CAN, Ethernet, power cycles, bootloaders, and OTA flows.
- Create reproducible hardware test rigs using power supplies, electronic loads, CAN analyzers, logic analyzers, GNSS and sensor simulators, and programmable RF links.
- Test degraded and fault conditions including jitter, clock drift, packet loss, bus contention, brownouts, hot-plug events, watchdog resets, and recovery paths.
- Collect and analyze logs, metrics, packet captures, Wireshark traces, logic-analyzer traces, and serial/TCP/UDP traffic.
- Reproduce, triage, document, and track defects through closure while partnering with avionics, autonomy, radio, payload, manufacturing, and Flight Test teams.
- Integrate hardware runners, smoke tests, protocol gates, and firmware artifact validation into CI/CD.
- Produce test plans, procedures, bench checklists, and other documentation, and mentor engineers on embedded QA and automation.
- Support occasional local field or range validation and travel less than 20%.
Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree in Robotics, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
- At least 5 years of professional QA/SDET experience, including automation for embedded, real-time, or safety-critical systems.
- Hands-on experience testing embedded Linux or RTOS systems and driver/HAL layers across UART, SPI, I²C, CAN-FD, and Ethernet.
- Experience building automated bench tests with Python and pytest, Robot, or equivalent, plus comfort with C/C++ artifacts and gtest.
- Experience validating networked real-time systems, MAVLink, DDS, WebSockets, asynchronous I/O, and telemetry over constrained or lossy links.
- Proficiency with Linux and Windows test environments, command-line tools, Python, Bash, PowerShell, and Git.
- Experience integrating test suites into GitLab CI, Jenkins, or GitHub Actions and working with firmware packaging, bootloaders, and OTA.
- Strong exploratory testing, defect isolation, written communication, and scenario-design skills.
- U.S. citizenship and ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. Government security clearance.
- Preferred experience includes HIL/SIL design, sensor and bus emulation, fault injection, PX4 or ArduPilot, uORB, QGroundControl, STANAG 4586, Cursor-on-Target, DDS/RTPS, CAN diagnostics, radios, GNSS, IMUs, JTAG, performance and reliability testing, DO-178C, DO-160, MIL-STD-810, MIL-STD-461, Yocto, Buildroot, Docker, Podman, TestRail, and Jira.
- Ability to lift or move laboratory kits weighing approximately 25 pounds and follow lab and range safety procedures.
Benefits
- Full-time onsite work at the San Diego headquarters with frequent hands-on bench and lab work.
- US base salary range of $140,000–$185,000.
- Medical, dental, and vision plans; 401(k); unlimited PTO; generous holidays; and December holiday hiatus.
- Generous parental leave, FSA, HSA, hospital indemnity, critical illness, and accident insurance.
- Basic life/AD&D and short- and long-term disability insurance fully covered by Firestorm, with optional additional life insurance.
- Free 24/7 mental health resources and additional legal and financial support services.
About Firestorm
Firestorm builds modular, open-architecture unmanned systems and mission-configurable hardware for defense customers, leveraging additive manufacturing to rapidly tailor platforms for diverse Department of Defense mission areas. Its fielded xCell platform is being developed in multiple variants and supported across mechanical, electrical, software, and manufacturing interfaces. Founded in 2022 and headquartered in San Diego, the privately held company sells hardware platforms and components to U.S. and allied military programs.