Senior AI&T Engineer - Space Systems

Axient Systems B.V.; Delft; On-site; EUR 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

Axient Systems B.V. in Delft seeks a senior AI&T owner to lead the end-to-end verification and test strategy for spacecraft hardware. You will drive the AI&T approach, define verification plans, and oversee campaigns across partner facilities and suppliers.

Collaborate with systems engineering and programme management to set standards, review supplier documentation, and ensure readiness reviews are executed. This role requires hands-on leadership and extended on-site presence across locations.

Qualifications

• Engineering degree required.
• 8+ years in assembly, integration and test of complex hardware.
• Full ownership of an integration and test campaign from planning to delivery.
• Hands-on environmental testing experience (vibration, thermal, TVAC).
• Spacecraft AI&T experience at platform, payload or mission level.
• Experience defining and procuring GSE.
• Ability to work in a multidisciplinary, transatlantic team.
• Willingness to spend extended periods on site at partner facilities.

Responsibilities

• Define the AI&T approach and verification strategy including testing and risk mitigation.
• Own Axient's AI&T campaign alongside partners and campaign specialists.
• Define V&V requirements and close-out verification.
• Approve subsystems at EM/FM levels before integration.
• Lead EM and flatsat activities: procedures, results, evidence.

Skills

8+ years hardware I&T

Spacecraft AI&T experience

Defence sector experience

Dutch language

Scripting: Python

Education

Engineering degree in aerospace/mechanical/electrical/optomechatronics

Tools

Python

MATLAB/Simulink

Job description

The Role

You will become the owner of AI&T at Axient: the approach, the standards, and the judgement about whether hardware is ready for the next step. The role gets there in two steps.

First, our current mission. Its AI&T campaign runs at a partner facility. Part of the campaign is our partner's to lead; part is Axient's responsibility, and there you work at the centre of the campaign, alongside experienced campaign specialists. How much you take on depends on what you bring: if you arrive with deep campaign experience, there is room to do considerably more. Either way, you leave that campaign knowing the platform, the partner, and the people, which is exactly the foundation for what comes next.

Then, a future programme. Its integration and test runs at Axient Systems, at partners, and at suppliers, but the responsibility is ours and it is yours. You own the AI&T end to end: approach, plans, procedures, supplier oversight, and the call on whether hardware is ready. That work starts while the first campaign is still running, so the two overlap and your input on the second begins early.

Most physical integration and test happens at partners and suppliers, in the Netherlands, Europe, and the United States. You define the verification and test approach, review and approve what suppliers propose, and are present when it matters: at readiness reviews, during critical test runs, and when something fails. In Delft we run software- and hardware-in-the-loop testing, and in time possibly a flatsat. A campaign that runs under our responsibility is yours from plan to execution: you set the approach and the standards, and you are at the hardware when they are put to the test.

You are the person who says hardware is ready, or that it is not. That judgement needs to hold up when the schedule is under pressure.

You work closely with systems engineering, which owns the requirements and the verification matrix, and with the programme manager, who owns schedule and cost. AI&T is where those two meet the hardware.

Key Responsibilities:

• The AI&T approach for future programmes: test philosophy and strategy including engineering, qualification, and acceptance testing as well as the use of engineering and STMs for risk mitigation
• Axient's part of the current mission's AI&T campaign, alongside our partner and our campaign specialists
• Definition of V&V requirements, and the verification close-out against them
• Acceptance of subsystems before integration, at engineering model (EM) and flight model (FM) level
• EM and flatsat activities: procedure creation and execution, result collection, and compliance evidence
• FM activities: satellite-level procedures, execution, and participation in the environmental test campaign
• Definition and procurement of mechanical and electrical ground support equipment
• AIT plans, test specifications, and test procedures, at system level and at supplier level
• Environmental and functional qualification campaigns: vibration, shock, thermal, TVAC, and EMC
• Optical alignment, calibration, and performance verification, together with the payload team
• Review of supplier AI&T documentation, and holding suppliers to it
• Test Readiness Reviews and Test Review Boards, as chair or as participant
• Investigation and disposition of non-conformances, anomalies, and test failures
• Contamination control, ESD, and handling requirements across the integration flow
• Realistic integration and test durations in the programme schedule, and the argument behind them
• The AI&T discipline itself as we grow: standards, documentation, and people

Your Profile

• Engineering degree in aerospace, mechanical, electrical, optomechatronics, precision engineering, or a comparable discipline
• 8+ years in assembly, integration, and test of complex hardware, at least part of it at system level
• Full ownership of an integration and test campaign, from planning (including logistics) through to delivery
• Hands-on experience with environmental testing: vibration, shock, thermal, TVAC, or equivalent qualification testing
• Spacecraft AI&T experience, at platform, payload, or full mission level
• Experience defining and procuring GSE
• Comfortable in a multidisciplinary, transatlantic team
• Able to spend extended periods on site at partner facilities. This is not occasional travel: during a campaign you are where the hardware is, for as long as it takes
• Experience with optical instruments and opto-mechatronics
• Familiarity with ECSS, in particular the verification and testing standards
• Scripting for test automation and data analysis (Python, MATLAB/Simulink)
• Experience building an AI&T capability from a limited starting point
• Defence sector experience
• Working proficiency in Dutch

What We Offer

A senior role with real ownership of a discipline, alongside engineers, project managers, and domain specialists. In an organisation this size your standards become the organisation's standards, and you will see hardware you qualified go to orbit.

A market-aligned salary and benefits reflecting the weight of the role. Room to grow as the Dutch organisation scales.

A positive outcome of a security screening (VGB-B) is a condition for employment. You can read more information about this on the website of the MIVD.

In your application, include a short description of one integration or test campaign you owned: what was tested and at what level, what your mandate actually was, and one thing that went wrong and how you handled this. Applications without this will not be reviewed.