HIL Test Engineer – Avionics & Flight Automation

Swarm Aero; Los Angeles (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Competitive base salary

Medical, dental, vision, and 401k

PTO and paid sick leave

Monthly wellness stipend

Daily catered lunch

Paid parental leave

Direct impact on national security

Engineering team

Job summary

Swarm Aero is seeking a hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) test engineer to design and bring up test systems for our autonomous aircraft avionics. You’ll build fixtures, write automation, and verify hardware through realistic operating conditions, enabling early fault detection and repeatable production verification.

You will collaborate with avionics, embedded software, flight controls, and manufacturing teams to translate requirements into practical tests, with clear pass/fail criteria and measurable

Qualifications

• Experience with HIL or automated test hardware for complex electronic systems.
• Strong electrical engineering fundamentals; hands-on hardware integration.
• Proficiency in Python, C/C++, LabVIEW for test automation.
• Experience with CAN, Ethernet, UART, SPI, or I2C.
• Ability to read schematics and develop test fixtures and harnesses.
• Ability to translate requirements into meaningful test coverage and diagnose failures across hardware and software.
• Track record taking a test system from concept to a reliable tool.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and bring up HIL systems that connect flight hardware with simulated aircraft systems and environments.
• Develop functional testers for avionics components and assemblies with fixtures, interface electronics, harnesses, and instrumentation.
• Collaborate with avionics, embedded software, flight controls, and manufacturing to translate system requirements into practical tests with clear pass/fail criteria.
• Develop automated test sequences for nominal operation, fault injection, and recovery behavior.
• Debug electrical, software, and integration issues using schematics, logs, oscilloscopes, and logic analyzers.
• Establish repeatable test methods, configuration control, and reporting across engineering and production.
• Improve test coverage, reliability, and execution time as hardware matures and production scales.

Skills

HIL systems development

Electrical engineering fundamentals

Python

C/C++

LabVIEW

Embedded interfaces (CAN Ethernet UART

Tools

Oscilloscopes

Logic analyzers

Job description

Swarm Aero is seeking a hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) test engineer to design and bring up test systems for our autonomous aircraft avionics. You’ll build fixtures, write automation, and verify hardware through realistic operating conditions, enabling early fault detection and repeatable production verification.

You will collaborate with avionics, embedded software, flight controls, and manufacturing teams to translate requirements into practical tests, with clear pass/fail criteria and measurable