Hardware-in--Loop; HIL Engineer

About Applied Intuition Applied Intuition, Inc. is powering the future of physical AI. Founded in 2017 and now valued at $15 billion, the Silicon Valley company is creating the digital infrastructure needed to bring intelligence to every moving machine on the planet. Applied Intuition services the automotive, defense, trucking, construction, mining and agriculture industries in three core areas: tools and infrastructure, operating systems, and autonomy.

Eighteen of the top 20 global automakers, as well as the United States military and its allies, trust the company’s solutions to deliver physical intelligence. Applied Intuition is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, with offices in Washington, D.C.;
San Diego;
Ft. Walton Beach, Florida;
Ann Arbor, Michigan;
London;
Stuttgart;
Munich;
Stockholm;
Bangalore;
Seoul; and Tokyo. Learn more at

We are an in-office company, and our expectation is that employees primarily work from their Applied Intuition office 5 days a week. However, we also recognize the importance of flexibility and trust our employees to manage their schedules responsibly. This may include occasional remote work, starting the day with morning meetings from home before heading to the office, or leaving earlier when needed to accommodate family commitments.

About The Role We are looking for an experienced engineer to manage and maintain our fleet of Hardware-In-the-Loop (HIL) rigs. You will help develop, integrate and deploy real-time Hardware-In-the-Loop simulation solutions. At Applied, we encourage all engineers to take ownership over technical and product decisions, closely interact with users to collect feedback, and contribute to a thoughtful, dynamic team culture.

• Manage and scale our growing fleet of HIL rigs that have diverse requirements and run on both ARM and x86 architectures.
• Integrate, test, deploy, and maintain HIL solutions that involve third-party hardware, specifically focusing on Group 1-3 sUAS platforms and companion computers.
• Design, build, and integrate Applied’s simulators with HIL hardware and flight stack software (e.g., Ardu Pilot, PX4) to solve for our customers’ autonomous validation use-cases.
• Configure, flash, and manage firmware across various flight controllers (like Pixhawk) and auxiliary hardware for automated testing.
• Develop and maintain automation scripts (Python, Bash) for system provisioning, health-checking, and monitoring of the HIL fleet.
• Design custom wiring harnesses or interface boards to bridge flight controllers, sensors, networking equipment, and simulation hosts.
• Troubleshoot and resolve complex hardware-software integration issues, including timing constraints, MAVLink latency, and serial communication faults.
• Collaborate closely with embedded software and simulation teams to ensure high-fidelity sensor data and flight dynamics translate accurately to the physical hardware.

• Extensive experience deploying, managing, and maintaining complex hardware systems on both ARM and x86 architectures.
• Strong proficiency in Linux environments, utilizing the command line for system configuration, performance tuning, and troubleshooting.
• Excellent networking skills, including a deep understanding of IP networking (TCP/UDP, routing, subnets) and experience diagnosing network bottlenecks in real-time environments.
• Deep, hands-on hardware debugging capabilities using standard lab equipment such as oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and multimeters.
• A solid understanding of standard embedded communication interfaces (UART, I2C, SPI, CAN) commonly used in sUAS hardware.
• Experience writing robust automation, testing, and infrastructure scripts in Python or Bash.
• Experience building or maintaining Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines that interact directly with hardware test benches.
• A strong sense of ownership and the ability to work cross-functionally to drive ambiguous hardware/software integration problems to resolution.

• Hands-on experience with Group 1-3 sUAS (small Unmanned Aircraft Systems) hardware and flight controllers, particularly Pixhawk.
• Familiarity with…