Test Engineer — Dexterous Humanoid Hand; human

Test Engineer — Dexterous Humanoid Hand (human)

Neura Robotics
• Munich

Full-time

In the Software Department, you're shaping robotic solutions that redefine human-machine collaboration. You'll work with cutting‑edge technology, setting industry‑changing standards. You’ll help develop our solutions, set new trends and drive innovations forward. In an agile and interdisciplinary team you’ll engage in exciting projects. With clear Scrum processes like daily stand‑ups, sprint planning, and reviews you remain flexible and efficient. Collaborating closely with other departments allows you to create software solutions that are both technically advanced and practically effective.

Here, you’ll find an environment where creativity and technological excellence go hand in hand. If you’re eager to turn ideas into reality and enjoy taking technology to the next level, the Software Development Team at NEURA offers the perfect challenge for you.

We are building dexterous humanoid hand platforms – multi‑DOF tendon‑driven systems with embedded tactile sensing, real‑time motor control, and AI‑driven perception running on edge compute. The stack spans custom PCBs, bare‑metal firmware, ROS 2 middleware, and learned inference models, all converging in a physical system that must work reliably in the real world. We are looking for a Test Engineer who can own validation across that full stack.

Not a QA function that arrives at the end of a development cycle – someone who builds the test infrastructure from the ground up, defines what “working” means at every layer, and keeps the team honest throughout development. The programme is early‑stage. There is no existing test framework to inherit. You will design it.

• Hardware‑Software Integration Testing

  • Design and execute integration test protocols for the hand control stack: motor driver boards, embedded compute modules, sensor interfaces, and the communication backbone (DDS over TSN Ethernet and SPI)
  • Develop hardware‑in‑the‑loop (HIL) test rigs for validating firmware behaviour against real actuator and sensor hardware – brushed DC and BLDC motor channels, absolute encoders, tactile sensor arrays, IMUs
  • Define and automate bring‑up test sequences for new PCB revisions: power‑on checks, bus enumeration, driver smoke tests, and channel‑by‑channel functional validation
  • Own the integration test protocol for the forearm‑to‑body elbow interface: DDS topic correctness, latency measurement, link‑loss behaviour, and safe‑state transitions under fault injection
  • Test the full closed‑loop control pipeline end‑to‑end: sensor input → embedded inference → motor command → physical response, with instrumented ground truth at each stage
  • Instrument and measure system timing: control loop jitter, DDS publish latency per topic, NPU inference latency, and end​‑to​‑end perception‑to‑action latency against defined SLAs
  • Validate mechanical‑electrical interfaces: connector continuity through range of motion, cable harness stress testing, signal integrity under flexion cycles

• Software Testing

  • Build and maintain the SW test suite covering: ROS 2 nodes and DDS topic pipelines, motion primitive state machines, grasp sequencer logic, and safety watchdog behaviour
  • Design unit and integration tests for the embedded inference pipeline: ONNX model output correctness versus CPU reference, ring buffer behaviour, multi‑task DDS publishing under sustained load
  • Implement regression test coverage for the control stack: position control loop stability, force ceiling enforcement, corrective tighten response timing, and arbitration logic between concurrent control modes
  • Define and run fault injection tests in software: simulate link loss, sensor dropout, classifier confidence below threshold, consecutive high‑severity slip events – confirm the system transitions to the correct safe state in every case
  • Build simulation‑based tests where physical rigs are unavailable: URDF‑based motion validation, kinematic limit checking, and trajectory feasibility before hardware deployment
  • Maintain CI pipeline integration: automated test runs on every firmware and software…