Senior AI&T Engineer - Space Systems

The Role
You will become the owner of AI&T at Axient: the approach, the standards, and the judgement about whether hardware is ready for the next step. The role gets there in two steps.

First, our current mission. Its AI&T campaign runs at a partner facility. Part of the campaign is our partner's to lead; part is Axient's responsibility, and there you work at the centre of the campaign, alongside experienced campaign specialists. How much you take on depends on what you bring: if you arrive with deep campaign experience, there is room to do considerably more.

Either way, you leave that campaign knowing the platform, the partner, and the people, which is exactly the foundation for what comes next.

Then, a future programme. Its integration and test runs at Axient Systems, at partners, and at suppliers, but the responsibility is ours and it is yours. You own the AI&T end to end: approach, plans, procedures, supplier oversight, and the call on whether hardware is ready. That work starts while the first campaign is still running, so the two overlap and your input on the second begins early.

Most physical integration and test happens at partners and suppliers, in the Netherlands, Europe, and the United States. You define the verification and test approach, review and approve what suppliers propose, and are present when it matters: at readiness reviews, during critical test runs, and when something fails. In Delft we run software- and hardware-in-the-loop testing, and in time possibly a flatsat.

A campaign that runs under our responsibility is yours from plan to execution: you set the approach and the standards, and you are at the hardware when they are put to the test.

You are the person who says hardware is ready, or that it is not. That judgement needs to hold up when the schedule is under pressure.

You work closely with systems engineering, which owns the requirements and the verification matrix, and with the programme manager, who owns schedule and cost. AI&T is where those two meet the hardware.

Key Responsibilities:

The AI&T approach for future programmes: test philosophy and strategy including engineering, qualification, and acceptance testing as well as the use of engineering and STMs for risk mitigation

Axient's part of the current mission's AI&T campaign, alongside our partner and our campaign specialists

Definition of V&V requirements, and the verification close-out against them

Acceptance of subsystems before integration, at engineering model (EM) and flight model (FM) level

EM and flatsat activities: procedure creation and execution, result collection, and compliance evidence

FM activities: satellite-level procedures, execution, and participation in the environmental test campaign

Definition and procurement of mechanical and electrical ground support equipment

AIT plans, test specifications, and test procedures, at system level and at supplier level

Environmental and functional qualification campaigns: vibration, shock, thermal, TVAC, and EMC

Optical alignment, calibration, and performance verification, together with the payload team

Review of supplier AI&T documentation, and holding suppliers to it

Test Readiness Reviews and Test Review Boards, as chair or as participant

Investigation and disposition of non-conformances, anomalies, and test failures

Contamination control, ESD, and handling requirements across the integration flow

Realistic integration and test durations in the programme schedule, and the argument behind them

The AI&T discipline itself as we grow: standards, documentation, and people

Your Profile

Engineering degree in aerospace, mechanical, electrical, optomechatronics, precision engineering, or a comparable discipline

8+ years in assembly, integration, and test of complex hardware, at least part of it at system level

Full ownership of an integration and test campaign, from planning (including logistics) through to delivery

Hands-on experience with environmental testing: vibration, shock, thermal, TVAC, or equivalent qualification testing

Spacecraft AI&T experience, at platform, payload, or full mission level

Experience defining and procuring GSE

Comfortable in a multidisciplinary,…