Senior Test Engineer - Space
antares · Los Angeles ·
- Seniority
- Senior
- Employment
- Full time
- Category
- QA
- Experience
- 5+ years
- Salary
- USD 140,000 – 190,000 / year
antares · Los Angeles ·
As a Space Test Engineer at Antares, you own end-to-end testing of avionics, electrical subsystems, and thermal hardware for space nuclear microreactors — from verification plans and automated test setups through thermal vacuum, vibration, shock, and EMI/EMC campaigns, data analysis, and root-cause investigations.
About Us
At Antares, our long-term mission is to make clean energy abundant from Earth to the Asteroid Belt. We’re fueled by the belief that advanced nuclear energy can strengthen our military, solve the climate crisis, elevate global living standards, and expand humanity's presence in outer space. To achieve our mission, we’re building mass-producible, inherently safe, deployable microreactors that can be used terrestrially, underwater, and in space.
The Antares team hails from SpaceX, the White House, the Pentagon, the Department of Energy, MIT, Rigetti Computing, General Atomics, Relativity Space, Ursa Major, and National Laboratories like Idaho, Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, and Savannah River. Antares has raised over $600M in venture capital from top-tier investors and has hundreds of million-dollars on contract with the military services, NASA, and the Department of Energy.
About the Role
As a Space Test Engineer on Antares' Mission Engineering team, you will develop and execute tests that demonstrate the performance and reliability of avionics, electrical subsystems, and thermal hardware for space nuclear power systems. You will own testing from requirements and test setup design through execution, data analysis, and reporting, with an emphasis on avionics verification, environmental qualification, and thermal performance. You will build test infrastructure and work closely with electrical, firmware, thermal, mechanical, and systems engineers to evaluate hardware under representative operating and environmental conditions. Your work will span bench testing, integrated system testing, and campaigns involving thermal vacuum, vibration, shock, and electromagnetic interference and compatibility. You will help identify failures early and turn test results into design improvements.
Responsibilities
• Develop verification plans for avionics, power electronics, sensors, and control systems; define test configurations, instrumentation, procedures, and pass/fail criteria tied to requirements.
• Design and execute avionics bench and integrated system tests covering electrical interfaces, command and telemetry, power sequencing, operating modes, fault detection, and recovery.
• Build automated test equipment and hardware-in-the-loop setups using programmable supplies, electronic loads, signal simulation, data acquisition, and flight-like hardware and software.
• Plan and execute environmental test campaigns, including thermal vacuum (TVAC), thermal cycling, vibration, shock, and electromagnetic interference and compatibility (EMI/EMC), working with external laboratories as needed.
• Verify electrical and functional performance before, during, and after environmental exposure; monitor telemetry and investigate intermittent faults, resets, and performance degradation.
• Develop thermal performance and thermal balance tests for avionics, power conversion equipment, and heat transport and rejection hardware; measure temperatures, heat loads, thermal interfaces, and heat rejection performance.
• Design and commission test setups, including instrumentation, harnesses, chamber feedthroughs, thermal interfaces, and supporting fixtures; establish calibration, measurement uncertainty, and equipment protection controls.
• Analyze electrical and thermal data, compare results with predictions and requirements, and document findings to support design decisions and verification closure.
• Lead test readiness reviews, maintain test schedules, and coordinate hardware, personnel, and facility availability with program milestones.
• Lead root cause investigations and corrective action verification; maintain test configuration records and develop repeatable procedures for development, qualification, and acceptance testing.
Basic Qualifications
• Bachelor's degree in electrical, aerospace, mechanical, or another engineering discipline, or physics.
• 5+ years of hands-on test engineering experience, including testing avionics, embedded electronics, or electrical subsystems.
• Experience developing test procedures, building instrumented test setups, executing tests, and analyzing results.
• Experience executing environmental or thermal tests, such as TVAC, thermal cycling, vibration, shock, or EMI/EMC.
• Experience using electrical test equipment such as oscilloscopes, digital multimeters, programmable power supplies, and electronic loads.
• Experience using Python, LabVIEW, MATLAB, or similar tools for test automation or data analysis.
Preferred Skills and Experience
• Experience qualifying spaceflight avionics or electrical hardware across multiple environmental test disciplines.
• Experience testing power management and distribution systems, motor drives, inverters, or integrated power conversion equipment.
• Experience with hardware-in-the-loop testing, fault injection, and debugging interactions between electronics, firmware, and system controls.
• Experience with command and telemetry interfaces such as CAN, Ethernet, SPI, I2C, or RS-422.
• Experience operating TVAC chambers and conducting thermal balance tests, including heater control, temperature instrumentation, and correlation with thermal models.
• Experience performing EMI/EMC tests and troubleshooting grounding, bonding, shielding, conducted noise, or radiated emissions.
• Experience testing heat pipes, heat exchangers, pumped fluid loops, radiators, or other thermal management hardware.
• Experience translating customer and program environmental requirements into qualification and acceptance test campaigns.
• Experience designing test harnesses, electrical schematics, and supporting fixtures, and coordinating test campaigns with outside facilities.
Additional Requirements
• Ability to work long hours and weekends as necessary to support critical milestones.
• Ability to lift 50 lbs unassisted; standing, climbing, bending, grasping, sitting, pulling, pushing, stooping, stretching, and carrying may be required to perform the functions of this position.
Culture
At Antares, we like to specifically tie each role to our founding document’s set of values–here are the top five cultural values we think you should believe at your core to be successful:
Think in Systems - Energy and Defense are complex ecosystems with numerous stakeholders with competing priorities, conflicting policies, perverse incentives, and emergent and path-dependent properties. First principles thinking alone is insufficient. Think probabilistically and then take action. “If you want to be certain, then you are apt to be obsolete.” Over-optimizing the components often degrades the system
Obsess over the End User - The customer and end user are often not the same. We will never build globally competitive commercial products if we lose sight of our end users and their entire interaction with the product life cycle
Be Unconstrained by Convention - Our only limits are the laws of physics. Many, even experts, will say what we are working on is impossible. They said the same about SpaceX reusing rockets. Generationally impactful companies, by definition, must accomplish the seemingly impossible. If it were easy, it would have already been done. Never shy away from a solution because it has never been tried before, and never choose to do something because that's “how it's always been done”
Go Where the Work Is - Never miss a chance to meet a customer, user, or stakeholder face to face, even if that means hopping on a plane. If you can’t make it, find a teammate who can channel your intentions and go in your place. Deep work can be done from anywhere, but we believe teams are built in person, and aim to maximize our time together
Operate in the Grey - Embrace nuance in pursuit of truth. Question every fundamental assumption
Equal Opportunity
Antares is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Employment decisions are based solely on merit, competence, and qualifications, without regard to 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.
To conform to U.S. Government export regulations, applicant must be a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful, permanent resident (aka green card holder), (iii) Refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or (iv) Asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, or be eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State. Learn more about the ITAR here.