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Salary: USD 175,000 - 220,000 / annual
Firestorm is building expeditionary defense manufacturing and autonomous systems, including modular unmanned aircraft and deployable microfactories designed for rapid deployment and adaptability in the field.
As Engineering Manager for Software Test & Automation, you will lead a team responsible for end-to-end software integration testing, release test planning, and automated test execution for aircraft software. Your team owns the SIL (Software-in-the-Loop), HIL (Hardware-in-the-Loop), and VIL (Vehicle-in-the-Loop) environments used to validate software before flight.
Key responsibilities include:
- Leading and growing the Software Test & Automation team
- Defining test plans, coverage criteria, defect disposition, and release reporting
- Driving end-to-end integration testing across simulation and flight-representative environments
- Scaling test automation to increase coverage while maintaining fast release cycles
- Owning the test capability roadmap and identifying gaps in environments, tooling, and instrumentation
- Building reliable test infrastructure for configuration, execution, observation, and reporting
- Partnering cross-functionally with autonomy, embedded software, controls, GCS, systems, and flight test teams
- Hiring and developing engineers with strong software, systems, and test fundamentals
Required qualifications: 8+ years of software, systems, integration, or test engineering experience; 3+ years leading engineering teams; experience owning integration and release testing for complex software-intensive systems; strong test planning and defect management skills; hands-on experience with SIL/HIL/VIL environments; software engineering fundamentals and test automation experience; ability to debug failures across software, interfaces, networks, and hardware; demonstrated cross-functional leadership.
Preferred: autonomous systems, robotics, aircraft, or vehicle testing experience; scenario-based system testing and fault injection; CI/CD automation scaling; flight software and flight test support; aerospace, defense, UAS, or safety-critical software background.
Role is based in San Diego with relocation assistance available. Export control compliance required (U.S. citizenship or lawful permanent resident status).
