Senior Hardware-in-the-loop Simulation Engineer, Technical Lead

Location: Palo Alto, California

Department: Software Engineering

About the Role:

Wing is looking for a Senior Hardware-in-the-loop Simulation Engineer, Technical Lead to join our Simulation team. This role is hybrid based in Palo Alto, CA. 

Simulation is a core technology for Wing. We provide essential tools for R&D and are critical to ensuring the reliability of our fleet of autonomous aircraft. The simulation team’s work spans vehicle physics and sensor modeling, large-scale simulation frameworks, test infrastructure for backend verification and integrated avionics and system testing. As our fleet and deliveries continue to grow quickly, we are establishing a dedicated team to own the next generation of our software-on-hardware testing infrastructure.

The Senior Hardware-in-the-loop Simulation Engineer, Technical Lead is a foundational role for someone who thrives on both technical execution and strategic growth. You'll be the owner of Wing’s HIL platforms driving their evolution to meet future scale. A key part of your role will be to define and execute on the HIL technical roadmap, transitioning HIL to a scalable, modular infrastructure approach, with test fixtures which can be easily deployed, debugged and serviced.

What You’ll Do: 

• Partner with engineering leadership to define the roadmap for scaled HIL testing, take the initiative to grow a team of engineers, establishing the hiring bar, technical vision, and best practices.
• Design, develop and maintain Wing’s HIL infrastructure for hardware and software integration and validation, with a focus on the embedded and perception systems and their integration with hardware. 
• Work as the bridge between Embedded Software, Perception, Systems Engineering, and GNC teams to anticipate future vehicle features and build corresponding HIL testing capabilities.
• Design modular test fixtures with a focus on ease of replication, and swappable components enabling large-scale, highly-available, automated hardware regression pipelines.
• Provide technical mentorship to junior engineers, guiding them in embedded systems development and HIL simulation best practices, and directing lab technicians responsible for physical execution, wiring, assembly and server setup.

What You’ll Need: 

• 8+ years of experience working with autonomous systems; including 4+ years focused on building and scaling HIL test environments.
• Proven experience designing hardware test systems, including continuous perception testing.
• Demonstrated ability to lead technical projects of significant scope and complexity, driving initiatives from concept to successful implementation.
• Proficient programming with C/C++ and Python
• Linux on advanced user level
• Hands-on experience with embedded operating systems and their integration within HIL setups.
• In-depth knowledge of hardware communication protocols and experience interfacing with sensors, actuators, and other hardware components.
• Familiarity in Electrical Engineering
• Experience with software quality assurance, in particular verification and validation testing.