Lead Electronics Test Engineer

About Northwood:

Northwood is a modern space infrastructure company focused on connecting space and Earth. The world runs on space. Space will run on Northwood. Our global ground network ensures that missions ranging from national security, to global connectivity, to disaster response can unlock their full potential and operate every day without fail.

Northwood is looking for an Electronics Test Engineer to build the test systems that ensure our hardware performs reliably from early prototypes through high-rate production. You’ll own test development end-to-end: defining strategies, designing fixtures and harnessing, building automation frameworks, and delivering scalable test infrastructure for both development and manufacturing. This is a highly hands-on role that sits at the intersection of electronics, software, and systems integration — ideal for someone who enjoys turning ambiguous problems into robust, repeatable test capabilities that help ship world-class systems.

Responsibilities:

• Lead integrated test development from concept through production, including test strategy, requirements, and execution plans

• Design hardware, wiring, and electrical systems to support electrical and RF testing for both production and development needs (fixtures, harnesses, interfaces, rack integration)

• Develop modular and reusable test automation software, including frameworks, drivers, and tooling in Linux environments using Python / Rust / C++

• Own test maintainability and reliability across the lifecycle — defining calibration, upkeep, debugging, and continuous improvement of test assets

• Investigate and root-cause failures, driving corrective actions across design, assembly, and test processes

• Support environmental and qualification testing (thermal, vibration, shock), including defining instrumentation and test procedures where needed

Basic Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering or related field

• 5+ years of experience in electronics or hardware test engineering, with demonstrated ownership of complex test systems

• Strong programming abilities (Python, C++, Rust), and comfort developing in a Linux-based environment

• Hands-on experience with electrical test equipment such as power supplies, DC loads, oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and network analyzers

Preferred Experience and Skills:

• Experience with RF test and characterization, including VNAs and spectrum analyzers

• Experience root-causing issues in integrated electronics (mixed-signal, digital, RF-adjacent systems)

• Familiarity with MIL-STD-810 test methods, including vibration, shock, and thermal testing

• Experience with EMI/EMC troubleshooting and compliance testing, including radiated and conducted testing

• Experience designing test racks / ATE systems (PXI, USB/LXI instrumentation, custom interfaces) and scaling them into production

• Experience building test data pipelines and analysis tooling (structured logs, dashboards, yield metrics)

• Experience writing reusable test software patterns (hardware abstraction layers, driver libraries, test sequencing frameworks)

• Comfort working at the boundary between HW + SW: firmware bring-up, control interfaces (I2C/SPI/UART), fault injection, telemetry capture
  

Additional Information:

To conform to U.S. Government space technology export regulations, including the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) you must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3), or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.

Northwood is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with Northwood 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.