Test Instrumentation Engineer

Huntington Beach, California, United States

Founded in 2023, Mach Industries is a rapidly growing defense technology company focused on developing next‑generation autonomous defense platforms. At the core of our mission is the commitment to delivering scalable, decentralized defense systems that enhance the strategic capabilities of the United States and its allies. With a workforce of approximately 350 employees, we operate with startup agility and ambition.

Our vision is to redefine the future of warfare through cutting‑edge manufacturing, innovation at speed, and unwavering focus on national security. We are dedicated to solving the next generation of warfare with lethal systems that deter kinetic conflict and protect global security.

Mach Industries is seeking a Test Instrumentation Engineer to own the external data capture architecture for flight tests across our autonomous UAS platforms. This role is responsible for the systems around the vehicle that tell us what actually happened during a test, including high‑speed video, drone footage, external sensors, range instrumentation, and precise time synchronization between those sources and vehicle telemetry.

This is a hands‑on field engineering role for someone who can design, deploy, troubleshoot, and validate multi‑source capture systems in dynamic range environments. You will support the full test lifecycle, including planning, readiness reviews, dry runs, day‑of‑test execution, and post‑test data handoff.

Because Mach develops low‑cost, rapidly iterated UAS platforms, external instrumentation is often critical to failure analysis and engineering decision‑making. In some cases, the external dataset becomes the most important record of the event. Success in this role requires technical judgment, discipline under field conditions, and the ability to turn raw test capture into trusted engineering evidence on a fast development cadence.

• Plan and deploy external data capture systems for flight tests, including high‑speed cameras, drone‑based footage, and ground‑based sensors.
• Design and maintain time‑sync architecture across external capture systems and vehicle telemetry sources.
• Align video, sensor, and instrumentation outputs with ground‑control and Mavlink telemetry logs.
• Support the full test workflow, including readiness reviews, dry runs, test‑day execution, and post‑test review.
• Coordinate with flight operations, manufacturing and engineering teams as well as vendors, and range personnel to ensure instrumentation supports test objectives.
• Capture safety‑critical and engineering‑critical events such as launch behavior, separation events, anomaly behavior, flight‑path deviations, and impact sequences.
• Build and maintain deployment‑ready field kits for external instrumentation, including cameras, mounts, sync hardware, storage media, power systems, and protective equipment.
• Organize, label, and package datasets so engineering teams can quickly use them for analysis without ambiguity or rework.
• Improve capture procedures, sync methods, equipment standards, and documentation based on field experience.
• Support flight testing at private and DoD ranges, including multi‑day deployments and occasional travel outside home base.

• Bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, robotics, systems engineering, or another relevant technical discipline, or equivalent hands‑on experience.
• 3+ years of experience with flight test instrumentation, field data capture, camera systems, sensor integration, or similar live‑test technical operations.
• Experience with high‑speed video systems and or drone‑based capture in outdoor operational environments.
• Wo…