HIL Engineer/Sr Test & Automation Engineer

Job description

Astra’s mission is to improve life on Earth from space by creating a healthier and more connected planet. Today, Astra offers one of the lowest cost-per-launch dedicated orbital launch services, and one of the industry’s leading flight-proven electric propulsion systems for satellites, the Astra Spacecraft Engine. The Opportunity: Astra is building Rocket 4, a high-cadence small-satellite launch vehicle. The Test & Launch team is the common infrastructure layer for the program – we design and operate the test stands, simulation environments, and launch systems that propulsion, avionics, GNC, and structures all depend on. This role sits at the intersection of instrumentation and control, automation software, and systems test. You will design DAQ and control architectures for test stands across the program, write the software that makes those stands run safely and repeatably, and work directly with engineering teams to define what test infrastructure they need and build it. One of the near-term workstreams for this role is the Launch System Simulator (LSS), a hardware-in-the-loop environment that runs the full avionics stack, flight software, and GNC algorithms against real-time plan...