Senior Systems Test Software Engineer

About the role

We are seeking a Systems Software Test Engineer to own and drive the testing strategy for the software stack that runs on every Saronic vessel. You will join the Software team to evolve our existing test capabilities—Hardware-In-The-Loop (HITL) station infrastructure, virtual machine integration tests, replay-based evaluation, and simulation—into a single, principled, easy-to-extend verification platform. You will introduce new testing approaches such as property-based testing, fuzz testing of protocol and message-bus surfaces, deterministic simulation, and fault injection for safety-critical state machines. As a software engineer first, your product is the confidence the rest of the team has when shipping code to a vessel in the open ocean.

You will collaborate with autonomy, perception, systems, controls, networking, and infrastructure teams to design and develop full system validation frameworks that run as native Rust unit and property tests, VM-based integration tests, on real HITL stations bridged into real hardware, and in simulation against captured fleet data. Your work will directly impact mission reliability by catching edge cases early and ensuring adversarial testing occurs long before code ever sees water.

Responsibilities

• Own and drive test initiatives for Saronic's system software, including the HITL test catalog, station orchestrator, HITL-VM bridge framework, and NixOS-based VM integration test suite.
• Design and roll out a unified test strategy that combines Rust unit and property tests, VM-based integration tests, HITL-based tests, and replay/simulation-based scenario tests into a single decision tree to ensure the right test type covers the right risk class at the right cost.
• Build out property-based and deterministic simulation testing across the software stack, focusing on libraries where invariants matter most (planners, trackers, schedulers, state machines, codecs, IPC framing, certificate/identity stacks). Introduce a shared invariant-testing pattern for adoption by other engineers.
• Stand up fuzz testing infrastructure from scratch: identify high-leverage surfaces, write harnesses, run continuously, and triage or resolve findings.
• Expand the HITL test catalog, driving coverage into underserved areas and extending VM-based integration tests to exercise real hardware paths. Treat HITL stations as a first-class product by keeping them healthy, observable, and reproducible.
• Harden the CI scheduler pipeline that manages reservations and execution across multiple physical stations; reduce flake; improve the test result dashboard and analytics.
• Build out chaos and fault injection capabilities (process kills, network partitions, time skew, CAN bus jamming, sensor dropouts) that complement existing test types and can be consumed by both property tests and HITL tests.
• Integrate onboard test infrastructure with cloud infrastructure for test artifact storage, MCAP capture and replay, metrics collection, fleet-data fetch, and CI plumbing to enable engineers to author one test and run it locally, in CI, on a HITL station, or against historical fleet data with minimal friction.
• Work hands-on with engineers across the company to catch real bugs: pair with feature owners on test plans during design reviews, write challenging tests, and travel to test sites to see tests in action on real boats when needed.
• Document everything: maintain test infrastructure architecture docs and runbooks so other engineers can add good tests without needing your direct involvement.
• Design, develop, and maintain software systems using NixOS for autonomous navigation, control, and communication of surface vessels.
• Collaborate with hardware engineers to integrate software with vessel systems for seamless operation.
• Implement algorithms for controls and sensor fusion; optimize network communications for low bandwidth/high latency environments.
• Conduct software testing and validation to ensure reliability and performance in real-world maritime environments.
• Participate in code reviews and maintain high coding standards for scalability and maintainability.
• Troubleshoot and debug complex software issues, providing timely resolutions.
• Document software designs, processes, and test results for compliance and knowledge sharing.
• Stay updated on industry trends, emerging technologies, and best practices in autonomous systems.

Requirements

• Senior: 5+ years of professional software engineering experience, with substantial time spent owning test infrastructure, V&V strategy, or reliability for a non-trivial production system (robotics, autonomous vehicles, distributed systems, embedded, networking, or similar).
• Staff: 8+ years of equivalent experience, including architecture and cross-functional leadership of a verification or platform reliability function.
• Strong programming skills in Rust and/or C++, plus comfort with Python for test orchestration, data analysis, and CI tooling.
• Hands-on experience building and operating one or more of: hardware-in-the-loop test rigs, fuzz harnesses, property-based test suites, deterministic-simulation frameworks, or large-scale simulation/replay pipelines.
• Track record of treating test infrastructure as a real codebase with strong systems intuition: ability to read unfamiliar daemons, identify invariants, and write tests that fail before bugs are fixed.
• Excellent debugging and root-cause analysis skills, with a passion for both "firefighting" and "fire prevention."
• Comfort working in a fast-paced startup environment where the test strategy needs to be designed and shipped, not just discussed.

Skills

• Direct experience in deterministic simulation testing (bonus).
• Experience with fuzz testing (bonus).
• Experience with proptest, quickcheck, or other property-based testing crates (bonus).
• Experience with NixOS tests, Nix flakes, and Cargo↔Nix integration (bonus).
• Familiarity with robotics middleware and IPC patterns (ROS/ROS2, Zenoh, Redis pub/sub, MCAP) (bonus).
• Familiarity with embedded Linux, low-level serial protocols (RS-232, CAN, SPI, I²C), and networking fundamentals (TCP/IP, UDP, QUIC, VPNs/overlays, PTP/PPS) (bonus).
• Experience operating CI at scale (e.g., Buildkite, GitHub Actions) (bonus).
• Experience with sensor fusion, controls, path-planning, or perception evaluation (bonus).
• Familiarity with maritime, aerospace, or other safety-critical operations; knowledge of DoD standards and regulations relating to software development (bonus).
• A bias toward writing tooling that lets engineers find their own bugs, rather than being the gatekeeper (bonus).

Benefits

• Medical Insurance: Comprehensive health insurance plans covering a range of services.
• Dental and Vision Insurance: Coverage for routine dental check-ups, orthodontics, and vision care. Saronic pays 100% of the premium for employees and 80% for dependents.
• Time Off: Generous PTO and holidays.
• Parental Leave: Paid maternity and paternity leave to support new parents.
• Competitive Salary: Industry-standard salaries with opportunities for performance-based bonuses.
• Retirement Plan: 401(k) plan.
• Stock Options: Equity options to give employees a stake in the company’s success.
• Life and Disability Insurance: Basic life insurance and short- and long-term disability coverage.
• Additional Perks: Free lunch benefit and unlimited free drinks and snacks in the office.

Physical Demands

• Prolonged periods of sitting at a desk and working on a computer.
• Occasional standing and walking within the office.
• Manual dexterity to operate a computer keyboard, mouse, and other office equipment.
• Visual acuity to read screens, documents, and reports.
• Occasional reaching, bending, or stooping to access file drawers, cabinets, or office supplies.
• Lifting and carrying items up to 20 pounds occasionally (e.g., office supplies, packages).

If this role is based in the United States, it requires access to export-controlled information or items that require “U.S. Person” status. As defined by U.S. law, individuals who are any one of the following are considered to be a “U.S. Person”: (1) U.S. citizens, (2) legal permanent residents (a.k.a. green card holders), and (3) certain protected classes of asylees and refugees, as defined in 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3).