Manufacturing Test Automation Engineer
At Anduril we are building multi-domain unmanned systems that will leverage unsupervised autonomy for the delivery of integrated multi-mission capability to our customers. Dive-XL is a large-displacement AUV program designed and built in Australia, all in-house. Our Manufacturing engineering team is growing and now seeking a Manufacturing Test Engineer with an Electronic, Mechatronic or Computer Science background to join our team as a Test Systems Engineer to enable rapid testing of cutting-edge defence hardware for undersea and flight vehicles. As a Manufacturing Test Engineer, you will have responsibility for optimizing Anduril's manufacturing test operations for best-in-class quality, reliability, speed, and asset utilization, all while meeting critical customer and internal development timelines.
About the role
As a Test Systems Engineer you will own the technical backbone of Manufacturing Test for Dive-XL - the frameworks, GUIs, automation, and tester integrations that the production team uses to bring up PCBAs, build bottles, check out systems, and accept vehicles at FAT. Hardware-meets-software work, on the floor, in production.
Concretely, the two flagship things you'll build:
- The manufacturing-line console. Pre-programmed for PCBA bring-up and bottle bring-up. Technicians execute curated, version-controlled tests through a GUI. They do not author command-line.
- The vehicle-level test base. A pre-programmed console for vehicle Factory Acceptance Test and system check-out. Same as manufacturing-line console.
Behind both: one framework, one config-managed toolchain, one OS target for test execution, and a CI/CD discipline for test code that today doesn't exist.
WHAT YOU'LL DO
- Design and build a production utility suite of tools. From requirements through architecture, through GUI development, through deployment to the floor. These are the two consoles that the production team will live in.
- Test framework architecture. The shared substrate underneath both consoles - test runners, instrumentation drivers, data logging, traceability hooks, error-code library, configuration management.
- Toolchain standardisation. NixOS-based, declarative, reproducible. Drive the move off mixed Linux/ Windows/ Mac/ NixOS dev environments to a single config-managed target.
- CI/CD for test code. Test software ships through pipelines, not over USB sticks. Stand it up, maintain it, hold the line on review and version control.
- Integration with Anduril's factory systems: MES (work instructions, routings, defect capture), Oracle ERP, Teamcenter PLM where relevant. Test results should land in the systems where they're traced and acted on, not in spreadsheets.
- Technician-facing usability. GUIs that lower the entry-skill bar. Curated, version-controlled tests. Clear pass/fail. Helpful error codes that point at the actual problem, not at a stack trace.
- Cross-site codebase convergence with other Anduril production sites. You're part of converging the AU and US Manufacturing Test stacks - shared framework, shared XL Utility code, common error-code library. You'll work with the US team to make that real.
- Floor support. When a test fails and it's not clear whether it's the product, the tester, or the test code - you debug it. You're the one called when the GUI throws an unexpected error and the build's stopped.
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS
- Engineering fundamentals. Degree in Software, Computer, Electrical, Mechatronic, or related engineering - or equivalent demonstrable experience. You can read a schematic and reason about what the test code is actually exercising.
- Strong software fluency for test automation. Python first, with real experience building, maintaining, and debugging test frameworks - not just scripts. You write code other people can read, change, and ship.
- Linux + command line as a primary environment. You live in a shell. You write Bash where it makes sense. You're comfortable with system-level configuration, process management, and network debugging - not as a special skill, just as how you work.
- Hardware-software interface fluency. You've written software that drives test instruments and hardware-under-test through real interfaces - USB, Ethernet, RS232/RS485, CAN, I2C, SPI, GPIB, or equivalent.
- Electronics troubleshooting hands-on. You can pick up an oscilloscope, a multimeter, or a logic analyser and isolate whether a problem is in the product, the tester, or the cable between them. You don't escalate the question - you get hands on and answer it.
- GUI development experience. You've built user-facing test consoles or operator interfaces - frameworks vary (PyQt, Tkinter, web stacks, LabVIEW front panels) but you understand what makes a tech-facing GUI usable vs frustrating, and you can ship one.
- Software-engineering discipline. You version-control test code. You write tests for the test code where it matters. You think about reproducibility, configuration management, and rollback before they bite.
- Bias to action and ownership. You see a fragmented toolchain and your reaction is to fix it, not to log a ticket. You're comfortable being the one who decides what the framework looks like.
- Clearance eligibility. Ability to obtain and maintain an Australian Government NV2 Security Clearance (Australian citizen).
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
- Production test environments - not just R&D test benches. Building software that has to survive a production floor, technicians under time pressure, and shift handovers is its own discipline.
- NixOS or other declarative-configuration systems (Ansible, Puppet, Chef). The target is NixOS; coachable from any solid declarative-config background.
- Test frameworks like LabVIEW, TestStand, pytest-based test harnesses, or equivalent - exposure to more than one is a plus.
- Experience working with - or building toward - common test metrics: first-pass yield, false-fail rate, tester utilisation, GR&R, test coverage.
- MES (Solumina, Ae), ERP (Oracle / SAP / NetSuite), or PLM (Teamcenter) integration experience.
- Subsea robotics or AUV/UUV domain experience.
- AS9100 / ISO 9001 environments and the configuration-management discipline that comes with them.
- Embedded firmware - flashing, debugging, reading datasheets, talking to bootloaders.
- Experience integrating with hazardous systems (high voltage up to 400V, hydraulics, compressed gas) - and the safety design that goes with it.