Senior Test Automation Engineer (Software)
Impulse Space
Software Engineering, Quality Assurance
USD 150k-200k / year + Equity
Posted on Jan 29, 2026
As a Senior Automation Engineer (Software), you will be responsible for creating test plans for software, helping build software test architectures and tooling, writing test cases, and ensuring the execution of the tests. This includes planning test scenarios to run in simulation, and on hardware-in-the-loop setups. You will collaborate with the GNC, Flight Software, and Embedded Software teams to close the gap between rapid development and mission-critical reliability. You will help ensure that software behaves correctly not just in ideal conditions, but in edge cases, fault scenarios, and real hardware configurations that are difficult to reproduce.
- Department
- Assembly, Integration & Test
- Employment Type
- Full Time
- Location
- Redondo Beach
- Workplace type
- Onsite
- Compensation
- $150,000 - $200,000 / year
Responsibilities
- Work alongside software and firmware engineers to identify failure modes and plan tests to detect them.
- Be a scrappy test engineer: dive deep into the company’s software architecture, develop a strong system-level understanding of the software and systems under test, and continually seek out new ways to stress them.
- Write and maintain test cases for CI/CD-based automated regression testing, as well as execute manual tests when needed.
- Verify that software components meet readiness criteria for flight and integrated testing.
Minimum Qualifications
- 5+ years of experience in software test, verification, or quality assurance.
- Experience working with Linux-based systems across development, test, and deployment.
- Familiarity with git workflows and best practices.
Preferred Skills and Experience
- 5+ years experience with Software-in-the-Loop and Hardware-in-the-Loop Testing for embedded systems.
- 5+ years experience with Python, C, and C++.
- Experience working in fast-paced startup or small-team engineering environments.
- Experience in the aerospace industry or other safety- or mission-critical domains.
- Experience designing or extending HIL test system architectures.
- Experience with CI/CD pipelines for embedded systems (e.g., GitLab, Jenkins, CircleCI).
Additional Information:
Compensation bands are determined by role, level, location, and alignment with market data. Individual level and base pay is determined on a case-by-case basis and may vary based on job-related skills, education, experience, technical capabilities and internal equity. In addition to base salary, for full-time hires, you may also be eligible for long-term incentives, in the form of stock options, and access to medical, vision & dental coverage as well as access to a 401(k) retirement plan.
Impulse Space’s spacecraft manufacturing business is subject to U.S. export regulations including the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) and Export Administration Regulations (EAR). This position requires applicants to be either U.S. Persons (i.e., U.S. citizen, U.S. national, lawful permanent U.S. resident (green card holder), an individual granted asylum in the U.S., or an individual admitted in U.S. refugee status) or persons eligible to obtain an export license from the U.S. Departments of State, Commerce, or other applicable U.S. government agencies. Learn more about the ITAR here.
Impulse Space is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with Impulse Space is governed on the basis of merit, competence and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability or any other legally protected status.
About Impulse Space
Impulse Space, the in-space transportation company founded by Tom Mueller, is opening access beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO) with its fleet of in-space transportation vehicles. The high-energy Helios vehicle unlocks orbits beyond LEO with its powerful Deneb engine, dropping off payloads in MEO, GEO, heliocentric, lunar, and other planetary orbits. The flight-proven Mira vehicle uses a nontoxic, high-impulse chemical propulsion system to offer orbital transport, constellation deployment, and precision reentry services to customers throughout LEO. Led by a team that delivered the most reliable rockets in history, Impulse provides economical and efficient in-space transportation by reliably and rapidly getting customers where they want to go.
Our Hiring Process
Stage 1:
Application Received
Stage 2:
Resume Review
Stage 3:
Intro Phone Interview
Stage 4:
Technical Phone Interview(s)
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