Senior Software QA Engineer, Avionics Platform

Who We Are

At Firestorm,we’reon a mission to revolutionize how defense solutions are designed and delivered. Our goal is to empower U.S. ally nations to effectively deter aggressors—regardless of their defense budget—through innovative, cost-efficient technologies. We call this vision “democratized deterrence.” As a VC-backed company at the intersection of defense and Silicon Valley,we’repioneering the development of mission-adaptable aerial vehicles that put power back into the hands of operators.

By prioritizing operator effectiveness,we’repioneering a new era of aerial vehicle design. We aim to upend the traditional defense procurement model by delivering world-class capabilities at a fraction of the usual cost. Join us at Firestorm as we redefine defense procurement, making cutting-edge technology accessible to all at a fraction of the cost.

Firestorm’s
Avionics Platform
team builds the softwareplatformthat flies our vehicles: flight computers and peripheral controllers running embedded Linux and RTOS stacks; middleware and Linux services; low-level drivers and HALs; and the critical interfaces that connect autonomy, payloads, and comms.

We’rehiring a
Senior Software QA Engineer
to be the first deep-testing line for this avionics stack—validating embedded firmware, board support packages, device drivers, and safety-critical data paths long before Flight Test.

You’llblend expert exploratory/system testing with targeted automation across HIL/SIL rigs, exercising real buses (CAN/CAN-FD, UART, SPI, I²C, Ethernet) and stressing links (MAVLink,Tactical Data Links, etc.) under real-world fault conditions.

You’llpartner closely with avionics, autonomy, radio, and payload engineers to harden reliability where it matters most: on the aircraft.

This is a full-time,
onsite
role at our San Diego HQ. Expect meaningful hands‑on time with benches, flight computers, power systems, radios, and sensors tovalidateend-to-end flight workflows.

• Own system test for avionics(embedded Linux + RTOS targets), providing fast, actionable feedback on functional defects, timing issues, and regressions that impact flight safety and operator trust.
• Plan and execute risk-based strategies: feature/bring-up test plans, exploratory charters, protocol-level regression suites, acceptance criteria, and release sign-off gates ahead of Flight Test.
• Build andmaintainautomation for HIL/SIL:
• SIL: host-based unit/integration tests for drivers and middleware (e.g.,gtest/pytest), simulation of sensors/buses, fault-injection hooks.
• HIL:
  Python-driven benches to exercise serial/CAN/Ethernet I/O, sensor emulators, and power-cycle/boot loader/OTA flows; automate log capture and golden-trace diffs.
• Stand up reproducible rigs: power supplies/electronic loads, CAN analyzers, logic analyzers, GNSS/sensor simulators, programmable RF links; script scenario playback and telemetry injection.
• Validate robustness under degraded conditions: jitter, clock drift, packet loss/duplication, bus contention, brownouts, hot-plug, and watchdog resets; verify safe behavior and recovery paths.
• Instrument and diagnose:collect structured logs/metrics; create packet and log scrapers; use Wireshark, logic-analyzer traces, and serial/TCP/UDP sniffers to isolate timing and state issues quickly.
• Own defect triage: minimize and reproduce; file high-signal reports with traces, steps, suspected root cause; track to closure with responsible engineers.
• Shift-left quality with the team: review code/IDLs from a testability lens, encourage dependency hygiene, feature flags, determinism controls, and golden datasets.
• Integrate into CI/CD(Git Lab/Jenkins): hardware runners for on-bench smoke, protocol/regression gates, and per-target artifact validation (e.g.,.bin/.hex,…