Autonomy Test & Validation Engineer

Textron Specialized Vehicles Inc. is a leading global manufacturer of golf cars, utility and personal transportation vehicles, professional turf-care equipment, and ground support equipment. Its vehicles are found in environments ranging from golf courses to factories, airports to planned communities, and theme parks to hunting preserves.

Responsibilities

• Develop scenario-based validation strategies covering nominal, degraded, and edge-case operating conditions.
• Verify autonomous system performance within defined Operational Design Domains (ODDs) while measuring system-level KPI’s.
• Execute safety validation activities and support hazard analysis and risk assessment activities.
• Support integration, commissioning, and validation of autonomous vehicles during prototype builds and field deployments.
• Capture high-quality structured datasets for continuous ML model improvements.
• Perform root-cause investigations across perception, localization, planning, and controls subsystems.
• Provide clear validation reports and insights to accelerate development.
• Develop best practices and protocols to ensure safe, valuable testing for autonomous vehicles.
• Work with technical development team to solve and troubleshoot problems in real-time during field testing.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Mechatronics, Electrical, Mechanical, Software Engineering or other related field.
• 2+ years of relevant experience in vehicle testing, robotics validation, or autonomous systems.
• Experience with Python, C++, or similar programming languages.
• Strong understanding of sensors (LiDAR, camera, GPS, IMU) and vehicle dynamics and control behavior.
• Ability to design structured test plans and analyze complex system performance.
• Experience with data logging, telemetry capture, and analysis tools.
• Hands-on, field-based debugging mindset with strong problem-solving skills.
• Valid driver’s license required.
• ~40% travel required to support field testing, KPI validation, safety testing, data collection, pilot deployments, and customer acceptance activities.

Skills

• Preferred: ROS2 systems and autonomy stacks.
• Preferred: Autonomous navigation and control concepts.
• Preferred: AI/ML systems in real-world environments.
• Preferred: Simulation tools (Isaac Sim or similar).
• Preferred: Basic scripting (Python) for data analysis and automation.