2 months ago
San Diego, CA, USASenior
Base Salary
$140k - $185k/yr
Responsibilities
- Own system testing for embedded Linux and RTOS avionics targets, identifying functional defects, timing issues, and regressions.
- 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 I/O, bootloader, power-cycle, and OTA workflows.
- Create reproducible test rigs using power equipment, CAN analyzers, logic analyzers, GNSS and sensor simulators, and programmable RF links.
- Validate degraded and fault conditions including jitter, clock drift, packet loss or duplication, bus contention, brownouts, hot-plug events, and watchdog resets.
- Collect logs and metrics, create packet and log scrapers, and diagnose issues using protocol traces, Wireshark, and serial/TCP/UDP sniffers.
- Own defect reproduction, triage, reporting, and closure with responsible engineering teams.
- Review code and IDLs for testability and promote deterministic testing, dependency hygiene, feature flags, and golden datasets.
- Integrate hardware runners, smoke tests, protocol gates, regression suites, and firmware artifact validation into CI/CD.
- Support safety, security, reliability, fuzzing, parser negative testing, permission audits, and fail-safe behavior aligned with applicable standards.
- Produce test plans, procedures, bench checklists, and bring-up documentation, and mentor engineers on embedded QA automation.
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 and/or RTOS platforms and driver/HAL layers over UART, SPI, I²C, CAN-FD, and Ethernet.
- Practical Python test automation experience using pytest, Robot, or equivalent to control benches over serial, CAN, or Ethernet.
- Comfort with C/C++ artifacts and host-based unit testing with 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, CLI tooling, Python, Bash, PowerShell, and Git.
- Experience integrating tests into GitLab CI, Jenkins, or GitHub Actions and working with firmware packaging, bootloaders, and OTA updates.
- 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, golden-trace comparison, PX4, ArduPilot, uORB, QGroundControl, STANAG 4586, Cursor-on-Target, DDS/RTPS, CAN diagnostics, radios, GNSS, IMUs, payload interfaces, electronics lab equipment, performance and reliability testing, DO-178C, DO-160, MIL-STD-810, MIL-STD-461, Yocto, Buildroot, Docker, Podman, TestRail, and Jira.
Benefits
- Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision plans.
- 401(k) retirement savings plan.
- Unlimited PTO and a generous holiday calendar with a 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 are 100% covered by Firestorm, with optional additional life insurance.
- Free 24/7 mental health resources and additional work-life services including legal and financial support.
- Full-time onsite work at the San Diego headquarters with frequent bench and lab work; occasional local field/range support and less than 20% travel.
- Occasional lifting or movement of lab kits weighing approximately 25 pounds and compliance with lab/range safety procedures.
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.