Senior Test and Automation Engineer
Inversion
$137,000 - $193,000 / year
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Description
Advanced Reentry Technologies
Who We Are:
Inversion is an aerospace and defense company pioneering advanced reentry technology to enable next-generation capabilities from space. By combining high-performance materials, precision aerodynamics, and mission-driven autonomy, Inversion is transforming reentry into an operational capability for an entirely new class of missions.
The company’s highly maneuverable reentry spacecraft, Arc, is designed for rapid global cargo delivery, hypersonic testing, and other national security missions that require precise, controlled flight through the atmosphere. Arc creates an entirely new transportation domain, unlocking unprecedented speed and global reach.
Headquartered in Los Angeles, Inversion designs, manufactures, and integrates its spacecraft under one roof, enabling the company to move rapidly from concept to flight. The company is backed by leading investors including Y Combinator, Spark Capital, and Lockheed Martin Ventures, with customers across the U.S. government and commercial space industry.
Position Overview:
As a Test and Automation Engineer at Inversion, you will work as part of the simulation team to build, test, maintain, and develop the automated software and hardware systems that support the simulation and test environments for our flight systems. The simulation team is responsible for ensuring that flight software and flight hardware can be continuously integrated and tested under realistic flight conditions. You will play a key role in the automation of electrical ground support equipment (EGSE) and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) test benches that will enable fast, repeatable development and deployment workflows across the engineering stack. Your work will empower Inversion’s engineering teams to iterate rapidly throughout the development life cycle and will strengthen Inversion’s ability to put our products into the hands of our customers with unprecedented speed and agility.
Key Responsibilities:
- Automate provisioning, deployment, execution, operation, and logging tasks to optimize resource utilization and allocation
- Develop automated test scripts to support qualification efforts for our flight software and hardware systems
- Develop device API wrappers for EGSE equipment (e.g.: to control power supplies, oscilloscopes, etc., via automated test scripts)
- Develop emulators for flight hardware to support software-in-the-loop (SIL) and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing
- Contribute to the design and development of a simulation system capable of automatically provisioning and deploying resources to support simulation workflows
Required Qualifications:
- 5+ years of professional experience in testing and automation of software and hardware systems
- Proficiency in one or more scripting languages (Python, Lua, Bash, PowerShell, etc.)
- Proficiency in one or more embedded languages (C/C++, Rust, etc.)
- Experience with Linux-based systems
- Must have the ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. government Secret/Top Secret security clearance.
Desired Qualifications:
- Proficiency in the integration and testing of mission- and safety-critical electronics
- Experience with modern DevOps practices
- Experience with async and multithreaded architectures
- Experience with data acquisition and logging
- Experience with robotics middleware and autonomy stacks (ROS 2, Webots, Orocos, YARP, etc.)
- Familiarity with time-series databases (InfluxDB, QuestDB, Prometheus, etc.)
- Familiarity with message-oriented middleware (NATS, Apache Kafka, RabbitMQ, etc.)
- Familiarity with containerization (Docker, Docker Compose, etc.)
Our office headquarters is located in Playa Vista, CA. This position requires in office presence.
The California annual base salary for this role is currently $137,000 - $193,000. Pay Grades are determined by role, level, location, and alignment with market data. Individual pay will be determined on a case-by-case basis and may vary based on the following considerations: interviews and an assessment of several factors that are unique to each candidate, job-related skills, relevant education and experience, certifications, abilities of the candidate and internal equity.
Benefits
- stock options
About this role
Inversion is building reentry systems to deliver payloads from space, and this role sits at the center of making that possible through rigorous testing infrastructure. As a Senior Test and Automation Engineer, you'll work within the simulation team to design and maintain the automated systems that validate flight software and hardware under realistic conditions. Your focus will be on building the provisioning, deployment, and test automation frameworks that let engineers iterate rapidly—from writing test scripts and device API wrappers for ground support equipment to developing emulators that simulate flight hardware behavior.
The role demands solid depth across multiple technical domains: at least five years automating both software and hardware systems, fluency in scripting languages like Python or Bash, embedded systems work in C/C++ or Rust, and hands-on Linux experience. You'll also need to be eligible for a U.S. government security clearance and meet ITAR compliance requirements as a U.S. citizen or permanent resident. If you've worked with mission-critical electronics, DevOps practices, async architectures, or middleware like ROS 2 and Docker, those experiences will strengthen your candidacy.
This is an in-office role in Playa Vista, California, with a salary range of $137,000 to $193,000 depending on experience and qualifications. It's a position suited to someone who enjoys bridging the gap between hardware and software testing, who can architect systems that scale across complex workflows, and who's energized by supporting a team pushing boundaries in space technology.
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Pay for this role
$137,000 to $193,000 per year
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